The Guardians
by Iolanthe Chubb
Summary: From Orphan to Heir: the Spiritual Journey of the Ringbearer
1. Timeless Halls

Author's Note: Grateful acknowledgments to _Niphredil of Doriath _for permission to quote from her wonderful songfic "It was a Hard Doom that Had to Fall." Primula's rhyming words to her son were written by Niph. 

Thanks to Di and Faramir for pre-readings and suggestions. 

Thanks to the Harem ladies for friendship, conversation, and more fun than I've had in years. 

Thanks to Tolkien for giving us this world and these characters to explore. To be able to do so is payment enough; I would never take money for writing about them. 

~~~~~ 

_"But of bliss and glad life there is little to be said, before it ends." _—Quenta Silmarillion

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

_To everyone there comes the day when childhood, in its timeless halls, ends, and mortal life begins. _

In memory, his dad was always laughing. Drogo Baggins sported the loudest, brightest waistcoats for miles around—everybody said so—not to mention the girth to show them off to best advantage. Frodo loved to curl up with his ear to Dad's chest, the bright brass buttons cool against his cheek and the laughter booming deep inside like a great drum. There was a pleasant odour of pipe-weed always clinging to Drogo, and then and ever after it brought to Frodo the new-mown hay, the fresh breezes, and the deep blue skies of all the fine summer days of the world. 

In memory, his mum's eyes were like those skies. His earliest recollection was of her bending over him, her dark curls surrounding her face in a braided wreath studded with meadow flowers and little jewels. Her smile was beautiful and soft, her voice was like drops of warm rain, and although everything she ever said to him was filled with love and pride, he recalled these words most of all: 

_"As fair as an elf-child, and gentle and kind,   
Yet as brave as a warrior, with a high and deep mind." _

They lived in a cozy suite of rooms, one of the finest in Brandy Hall, with plump chairs and fat featherbeds, a stone fireplace where they cooked first breakfast, and a big round window looking out over the River. Frodo's mum was Primula Brandybuck, daughter to the old Master of the Hall, Gorbadoc the Broadbelt, and sister to the new Master, Uncle Rorimac. Uncle Rory managed Buckland and the Marish with a loud voice and a firm though fair hand, and every hobbit for miles around respected him.

Although Brandy Hall was not the biggest hobbit-mansion in the world—Great Smials, the Took cousins' hall far away in the Westfarthing, had that distinction—it was much the grandest and best, with pony rides and boating on Brandywine in summer, and in winter the Yule fires roaring in the Great Room, bright holly and sharply-scented pine boughs wreathed and swagged everywhere. And all year long there was feasting and singing, as much as any hobbit could want. 

There were lessons, too. Each day Mistress Prettyfoot came from Bucklebury, and everybody sixteen and under had to learn their letters, their numbers, and their Shire history. Frodo had a few cousins—Reginard Took and Rico Bracegirdle, in particular—who liked to woolgather and play truant, and who when they got taken down for it sauced the poor mistress unmercifully. But Frodo loved every lesson. Naturally the schoolmarm doted on him and could not praise him highly enough to Mum and Dad. "He has a fine mind, a scholar's mind," she'd say. "He'll soon have learned everything I have to teach him, and then what will I do?" 

Every morning, after mushrooms and bacon, apples and scones and butter, Mum would kiss his forehead before she sent him off, saying, "Study hard, Frodo. Learn your lessons well. You'll need them one day." Then Dad would give him a wink and a huge crushing hug and say, "And after that, play hard. It's another fine day to be off with your cousins. There's no better place for a young hobbit than Brandy Hall. No better place for a hobbit of any description, come to that." 

It was true. After luncheon Frodo and never fewer than two dozen cousins would be off, running till dark all over Bucklebury and the nearby countryside in search of a patch of sweet buckberries or a new crop of plums, running to see a fallen gate or an overgrown lane no one had noticed before, a newly foaled pony, a newly dropped calf, always running because they could burn the green energy of childhood no other way. With all the laughter, the high spirits, the stories, games, and lessons, and best of all the sumptuous meals six times a day: at Brandy Hall there was so much to do, and to eat, and to play. Drogo and Primula saw to it that Frodo's childhood was filled with love and joy. And throughout his life their legacy remained a light that neither time nor suffering could stain.

~~~~~ 

If anything could dim the happiness of that long-ago boy and his parents, it was this: for as long as he could remember, Mum and Dad had been promising Frodo a baby hobbit. Secretly he wanted a sister, a hobbit-lass he could hold in his lap and brush her dark hair and wait on her hand and foot like a princess. Because of course she would be a princess—didn't Mum always tell him he was a prince? Anyway, he liked girls. He liked boys, too, for the particular things that boys enjoyed when girls weren't near—coarse jokes, roughhousing, the joys of finding something dead and disgusting washed up by Brandywine. 

But girls were another matter. They were an endless source of fascination and delight—and, in the end, a mystery. They always seemed to know some outrageous secret about you, which they just happened to be sharing in ecstatic wide-eyed shock the very moment you came along. At the sight of you they'd squeal and scatter like geese. Which, instead of making you wonder what you'd done to make such a laughingstock of yourself, always made you strut like a gander. 

When his sister came he would ask her to explain all this. But time passed and there was still no baby hobbit. Frodo never doubted that she would come eventually. There was nothing his parents could not—or would not—do for him. It was true they were older than some mums and dads, but they were not too old for babies. And the Shire-folk were a fertile people; you never heard of anybody who was childless against their wishes—although every now and then one of the gammers would remark that there just didn't seem to be as many little hobbits as in the old days.

As time went by Mum got more and more frantic about it. She came from folk with big families, Brandybucks and Tooks. So did Dad. This garden should have grown more than one blossom, sturdy and handsome though he was. So they would stock up on various herbs and potions the midwives thought might help, and she and Dad would go off to Crickhollow by themselves for a day or two, and when they got back Mum would be much more cheerful and would promise Frodo that _it shouldn't be long now. _But nothing ever happened. 

She would put on a brave face then, and take Frodo in her lap and say, "Well, if I must have only one, then let it be my sweet prince, my hobbit-lordling:

_As fair as an elf-child, and gentle and kind,   
Yet as brave as a warrior, with a high and deep mind." _

Frodo always blushed fiercely at this, and Dad would wink at him and say, "Come now, Primmie, you'll fill the boy's head with notions."

"But it's true. He'll be great one day, the greatest hobbit the Shire has ever seen."

"Well, needless to say I'm delighted to hear it, my dear. But how can you possibly _ know?"_

"I've always known. It was placed in my heart the moment I held him for the first time."

"Every mum says things like that," Frodo would say, though his heart burst with happiness whenever she talked that way. 

"Yes, they do," Mum said, "But this is something more. _You are so special a gift to me. And your love, opening at once almost as soon as you were born, foretold to me the greatness of your spirit. _Who are you, Frodo Baggins?"

"I'm myself, Mummy." 

Then Dad would come and put his arms around them both, and for a time all sorrow and disappointment were forgotten. 

~~~~~ 

Frodo was nearly twelve, and the baby-longing was now acute. Mum's nephew Seredic and his new bride had taken over Crickhollow for the summer. So instead of honeymooning Mum and Dad went for picnics and long walks in the countryside, anything to get off by themselves for a bit. On the evening of the 13th August they set off for a sail in the moonlight. They kissed Frodo good-night and sent him down to join his cousins. This was a peculiarly Brandy Hall kind of treat: twenty or thirty young hobbits collapsed in a heap on the floor of the Great Room, clothes and all. Of course they had their own trundles in their parents' chambers, but what fun was that to a pinching, giggling mob curled up right there beside you on the floor, shoulder-to-shoulder and hip-to-hip? 

The weather had been hot and muggy so there was no fire, but a thick pipe-weed haze lingered in the Great Room long after the grownups had gone to bed. Frodo fell asleep with his cousin Melba's thick straw-coloured braid across his face. Some time after midnight he was awakened by the sound of urgent voices outside, in the courtyard. It did not concern him, because Uncle Rory kept the world safe. In the meantime the heap of sleeping hobbits had shifted. He brushed his cousin Reginard's sandy-haired foot off his neck and turned over, curling flank-to-flank against Melba and falling back to sleep. 

~~~~~ 

_The Lord Ulmo, guardian of the waters of the world, seldom came so far up Baranduin, preferring to tend to matters in the remotest reaches of the Great Sea. And so he was not there to confront the nameless thing that arose from some brackish sump in the Old Forest and oozed through underground fissures into Withywindle, then slithered downstream into the brown waters of Brandywine and upstream toward Bucklebury, where in capricious malice it capsized the boat of two hapless mortals. Too late their cries came to the River-woman, Ulmo's servant, who upon her arrival could do nothing for the Little Ones but cast a spell of peace and surrender over their agonized air-starved flesh, thus easing their passage from the circles of the world. _

~~~~~ 

He woke up with a start. Something was wrong. The Great Room was empty. The floor was cold, his cousins had vanished, and he was alone, a rare and disquieting thing in Brandy Hall. An unnatural silence blanketed everything. He wondered if dragons had invaded and by freakish chance he was the only one left. Waking up a little more, he saw that full daylight was streaming in the windows. Maybe I'm just a lazy sleepyhead today, he thought. He roused himself and padded up the tunnel to Mum and Dad's rooms, hoping he wasn't too late for first breakfast and too early for second.

There was no welcoming aroma of mushrooms and bacon to greet him. Mum and Dad weren't there. Their bed had not been disturbed. It was all made up just as it had been the evening before, with Mum's best white lacy gown laid neatly across it.

His heart began to beat hard. He ran from the bedroom and back down the long tunnel with its succession of round doors. The parlour where Rory held forth was deserted. Hundreds of people lived in Brandy Hall, yet there was no one anywhere. Even the kitchens were silent. This was almost as terrifying as the fears that were beginning to beat upon him. He ran outside, through the big red door, through the empty courtyard, and down the wide steps to the embankment. Then he stopped short.

Every hobbit in Brandy Hall was there, by the River. Practically everyone who lived in Bucklebury was there too. The noise ought to have been worse than a cyclone. There was hardly a sound. Aunt Amaranth, Mum's maiden sister, and Rory's wife Aunt Menegilda had Frodo's cousins all herded together around one of the lamp-posts. All of them, even the grown-ups, were huge-eyed with fear. His aunts ran about frantically, trying to keep the little ones contained. Rory and his brother Uncle Saradas were speaking in urgent shrill whispers to the farmhand Cotto, the fisherhobbit Mott, and a brace of shirriffs. Everybody else hung back, deliberately leaving a wide clear space around Frodo's uncles, and around a small boat that lay upside-down upon the lapping brown verge of Brandywine.

Now his heartbeat was deafening. He searched the crowd for Mum and Dad. He couldn't find them anywhere. Anxiously he scanned the faces of his cousins and aunts and uncles. Most of them would not even look at him. Those who did had the most dreadful pity in their eyes. He stumbled toward Melba and Reginard, always close by when you needed them. When Aunt Mennie saw him she cried, "What are you doing here?" 

"What's happening? Why didn't you—" Frodo began, but someone gave a shout and everybody turned at once.

A haywards' waggon, drawn slowly by two huge grey ponies, came rounding the bend in the road from south Buckland. The driver and his companion looked grim and sad. In the back of the waggon, under a coarse tarp, lay two lumped, still forms. No one spoke or even breathed as it slowly drew to a stop. 

"We found one just above Haysend, caught in a tangle of roots," the driver said, climbing down. "The current had the other one fetched up against the grindwall." Rory nodded, then stepped forward and flung the tarp aside. Aunt Menegilda flinched and pulled Frodo against her, pressing his face into her ample waist, not letting him see them, his Mum and Dad, washed up by Brandywine with no more dignity than some luckless fox or badger, dead and disgusting....

There was a collective gasp, a moan of dismay, a slow swell of weeping and keening. Mennie didn't want Frodo to hear any of it. "You shouldn't be here," she chittered. "Inside with you now. Inside with you." She got him by the arm and half-pushed him, half-pulled him up the steps and through the big red front door of the Hall.

"Why didn't you come and get me?" he shouted, wildly struggling, half crazed with shock and horror. "Why did you leave me behind and let me wake up all alone? Did you think I wouldn't find out?" 

"What could you have done?" Mennie shouted back, half crazed herself. "Save me, but I am trying to spare you the worst of it, boy! Why are you fighting me like this?"

"Let me go! Let me go!" He broke free of her painful grasp and ran up the tunnel to his parents' rooms. He flung himself on the nubbly white coverlet and buried his face in his mum's lace gown. It smelled like her, like lavender. She was not going to wear it now. She was never going to wear it. There would be no more mushrooms and bacon, no more eyes blue as summer skies gazing on him with love, no more jolly waistcoats and booming laughter. There would be no little hobbit-sister.

Anguish and terror so utterly overwhelmed him that neither his mind nor his body could contain them. 

~~~~~ 

He didn't think he slept, but when his cousin Esmeralda called him for tea he had to fight his way back from a terrifying dream-place. Ezzie was his favourite of the younger grown-up cousins, very much like Mum and in more than looks. Though he didn't want to go downstairs and face the others, he trusted Ezzie to know what was best for him. He did not resist as she took his hand and silently led him, still half in the twilight dream, down the tunnel. Slowly the other half of him awoke to the real nightmare. It was true. It hadn't come untrue while he slept. They were dead. His throat ached, and there was a dizzy throb behind his eyes. He couldn't catch his breath.

But sleep had been no better. In his dreams he heard Mum calling to him, her words echoing and distorted as though they came from across a great chasm. He knew he must find her, for she was moving further and further away from him, and soon that lovely voice would be lost to him forever. He thought he was running through a terrible storm, trying to follow her through rain and booming thunder and cracks of lightning. In one brilliant flash the woman who spoke with Mum's voice was revealed. It was not Mum. It—she—was something huge and beautiful and terrible. And yet her voice was so sweet! Despite his terror he bent his soul and will upon her words, straining to remember each one. But her speech was no longer the speech of hobbits. It was a language both melodious and rich, and yet utterly alien. He could understand none of what she said. And he wanted so desperately to understand!

The dream was like a final, bitter gift, offered but in the end denied him.

All song and laughter had departed from the Great Room. No one wanted to look at him. Even Reginard and Melba turned away. But Esmeralda brought him his tea and sat down beside him, gently brushing his hair off his forehead. Obediently he put the cup to his lips, but he couldn't swallow for the dreadful ache in his throat. He felt stunned, concussed. 

"Oh, I know it's so hard, but you really must try to eat something, Frodo dear," Ezzie said. Mennie and Amaranth hovered over him, carefully watching his face. 

"Well, he's dry-eyed as can be, bless him," Amaranth said. 

"Good. Good. There's a brave lad," Mennie said. "A brave, brave lad." 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

NOTE on Chapter One _"You are so special a gift to me. And your love, opening at once almost as soon as you were born, foretold to me the greatness of your spirit." _—A paraphrase of words written by Tolkien to his son Christopher in Letter #64, 30 April 1944.


	2. The Burglar

Chapter Two -- The Burglar 

~~~~~ 

_Black came a cloud as a night-shroud.  
Like a dark mole groping I went.   
_—"The Sea-bell," from The Adventures of Tom Bombadil 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

They never meant to forget about him, to plough him under like so much shepherd's purse or kingsfoil. But in a ramifying warren filled with children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nieces, nephews, in-laws, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, brothers, farmhands, nursemaids, housemaids, cooks, gardeners, stable-hobbits, and assorted "relations" who stopped for tea seventeen years ago and never left, one small teenager was easily overlooked.

At first Frodo spent his nights in the Great Room, finding some comfort in the closeness of his cousins. But it was not the same. Melba and Reginard and the rest were kind but wary, made uncomfortable by his new status as _the one who had something terrible happen to him. _He had become a stranger, even to himself. After some time had gone by he thought he might feel better, more natural, if he went back to his own bed, even though Mum and Dad were no longer cozy and comfortable in the next room.

But when he got to that now-closed round door he found he could not bear to think of the absence on the other side. He sank to the tunnel floor, his knees drawn up and his cheek pressed against the worn wooden panel. How long had it been? Weeks? No, it must be months now; while he'd been stumbling about lost and empty the weather had turned cold, and his aunts had begun decking the Hall with pine boughs. Soon it would be Yule. The feasting and singing would be subdued this year because of the loss of Drogo and Primula. Yet the Sun would return as she always did, making hearts grow lighter with the lengthening days. Already there were smiles and wisps of laughter here and there as time passed and folk mourned their fill. 

But time had brought no healing to Frodo. He found he could neither rage nor weep, laugh nor feel hope or joy in anything. Nor could he sleep. Sleep exhausted him. He dreaded the strange overwhelming images that had filled his dreams since the accident, and he dreaded waking up to some new disaster. But dreaded or not, sleep finally caught up with him, there on the tunnel floor. The next thing he knew Aunt Mennie was shaking him awake and squawking, "Get away from here! Get away! Get away! You shouldn't be here!"

"Why not?" Esmeralda said, coming up behind on her way to breakfast. "These rooms have been Frodo's home since he was born."

"Because we must respect the dead," Mennie said. "Because we ought to leave them—and their things—in peace for a decent interval. Because all this moping isn't natural. Now get on down to the Great Room, lad. It's almost time for second breakfast. Come on, then."

She dragged him to his feet. Frodo knew that Mennie never meant to cause him pain, yet she jerked him about so roughly that she'd bruised him time and again. He never had the heart to protest.

But Esmeralda saw, bless her. "Auntie, don't! You're hurting him!"

With a gasp Mennie let him go so abruptly he fell backwards. "Oh, save me! I didn't mean it, Frodo! Oh, dear, I never know what to do. Here, get up, lad. Dear me, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

"It'll be all right," Ezzie said. "Here, you go on, Auntie. Go on, now! I'll see he gets his breakfast. _Both _his breakfasts."

When Mennie was gone, Esmeralda got down on the floor with Frodo and gathered him in her arms. Timidly, slowly, his own arms crept about her. He adored Ezzie. He was half in love with her, in fact, although she was much older, a grown-up. But she was so like Mum, so soft yet so fierce, as only the Took women could be.

"Frodo," she said, "this is dreadful. I'm only a guest in Brandy Hall, but you are not. You belong here. And if this were my smial I would quickly set some things to rights!" 

She rocked him gently. He felt safe with her. He wanted desperately to cling to her and not let go until all the anger and sorrow had left him. But the fires of his anger were smothered, and as for the sorrow, he had gone for so long without weeping that he had quite forgotten how.

~~~~~

Well, they couldn't have Frodo poking about in there, getting into things and making himself miserable. There was too much else to worry about that winter—rumour of ill-natured Big People bothering folk in the Southfarthing, and the Old Forest mounting a particularly vicious attack on the Hay. And so, on Aunt Mennie's advice, Uncle Rory sealed off Mum and Dad's rooms and locked them.

Few doors inside Brandy Hall had ever had locks to begin with, and the keys to most of those had been lost for a hundred years. Rory placed a stout latch on Mum and Dad's door and put a thick chain through it, then secured it with a fat padlock of the sort used on leaf warehouses down by the southern Bounds. Such a lock would pose a challenge to the cleverest hobbit youth. No doubt Rory was counting upon Frodo having neither the heart nor the will to attempt it. If so, he was right. Lock-picking was a fine art, requiring brains in top of form. Brains fraught with grief and loss were of no use.

So Frodo waited until dark, then silently clambered up the warm, breathing shoulders of Buck Hill, into which Brandy Hall was excavated. He'd done this dozens of times before, usually with a cousin or two. Rory didn't like them doing it, of course; it was hard on the creeper-covered turf that served as both wall and roof to the smial within. Nor did the aunts and uncles who lived there enjoy glancing out their high round windows of a fine evening only to unexpectedly come face-to-face with a rowdy young Brandybuck. But Frodo disturbed nothing and no one. Quickly he found his window, and with a few well-placed blows with the edge of his hand and a good jiggle or two, he worked the casement open. Then he slipped inside.

Darkness and silence engulfed him. He drew back the stiff greying curtains, once bright yellow, just enough to let in the lamplight from below. The rooms were untouched. Mum's gown lay crumpled, just as he had left it the morning after she died. He flung himself on the bed and buried his face in it. The gown had been fresh and soft then, lightly scented with lavender, as though Mum herself were just around the corner. Now it was dingy, brittle and lifeless.

Loss and sorrow descended upon him then, filling the room like a searing wind. For a long time he clung to the bedclothes, cowering, hiding his face. It left him dry to the bone, aching with thirst and longing. Tearless, eyes burning, he roused himself at last, and went dumbly from room to room, exploring the silent tomb of his life. On the mantlepiece in the parlour, amid a dry scattering of pipeweed crumbs, Dad's pipes stood in their rack in a jaunty row, with strange and lovely tobacco-jars of Elven make, gifts from Uncle Bilbo, standing sentinel on either side. On the dining-table Mum's silver spoon and her favourite tea-cup, painted with tiny violets, lay upturned on a linen towel, waiting for her to return for her tea. She had set everything out before she left. In her silver tea-ball the leaves still held a hint of fragrance. But the water in the stout grey kettle was long since gone to vapour.

Numbly, silently, he wandered into his own bedroom. He'd left his trundle made up neatly for once, his toy dog Laddie standing guard on the bolster. Aunt Asphodel had made Laddie for Frodo years before from scraps of fabric. He had a motley, comic little muzzle, limp knitting-wool whiskers, and black buttons for eyes. But his once-shiny eyes were dim with dust, and his coat was faded and dull. Gently Frodo brushed him off, then tucked him under one arm. He would need Laddie's courage to help him face entering the sitting-room.

Here he ventured a little candlelight. He felt Mum's absence most acutely in this room. It was her special place, where she kept her books and her writing desk, the latter built for her by Uncle Saradas when she was a lass, exquisitely carved and painted. It closed up and locked with a tiny silver key, through which Mum had tied a green ribbon. Even though Mum always left the key in the lock, Frodo had never dared to look inside.

Reverently he opened it. All Mum's treasures were there: the dozens of letters that had passed between her and Dad when they were courting, tied in bundles with fading ribbons; and her poems, a lifetime's worth, neatly lettered on parchment, sewn and bound in calfskin. Mum's poems mostly sang of her parents, her brothers and sisters, the seasons, the green countryside, and of course of Dad and Frodo himself, fair as an elf-child. But some sang of grander, stranger matters. Mummy always said that there was far more to Middle-earth than the Shire-folk cared to think about: there was a glorious long history filled with war, triumph, and sorrow, still richly ringing with the music of a greater world beyond. Frodo never understood that part, but whenever Mum got to talking about it her eyes shone and she seemed far away, beyond their rooms in Brandy Hall. Then she would go off for hours and write poetry. Dad was in awe of her. He would shake his head and say, "Ah, Frodo, how did such a lady end up married to dull, ridiculous me? Well, no matter. I'm awfully glad she did. Let's you and me go out and visit the ponies, and we'll let her do her work."

At the very back, in a small wooden chest inlaid with jeweled runes, he found her journal-books. No one, not even Dad, had ever touched them. They were so precious and so personal he thought he should leave them unread, do as Mennie would urge and leave the dead in peace. But his heart would not allow it. Mum was there, in those books, or at least a vast and important part of her was there, and he missed her so desperately. He set the chest on the floor, removed the lid, and for a long while sat cross-legged on the rug just looking at them, his hands in his lap. At last he chose one at random. It was bound in soft buttery leather and tied with faded blue ribbons. Eagerly, yet with exquisite care, he opened it, and Mum's elegant handwriting spilled out across page after page, flooding his eyes and his spirit. Her script was interspersed with little drawings of birds and trees and the faces of her cousins and friends. She had made notes in the margins in letters so tiny he could hardly read them. Pressed between the pages were flowers, snips of ribbon, bits of cloth—captured fragments of her long-ago days and years. She had recorded her coming-of-age ambitions, her bemusement at the attitudes and antics of her immense family, her impatience with the absurd ways of hobbit-kind, and—Frodo's heart quickened—her astonishment when she discovered she had fallen in love with Drogo Baggins:

_"I have known him all my life, but never until now have I paid the least attention to him. There's nothing particularly remarkable about him. Fellows are fellows, after all—loud, rude, and ribald more often than not. They all eat too much and they all get stout. They all tipple a good deal more than they should. And most of them give more attention to the distinctions between this variety of pipeweed and that than they do to the health of their aging mothers. Drogo's a fellow like the rest._

"Yet he has a laugh like nothing I ever heard—deep as the sky and joyful as sunshine. And his heart is so great that the entire Shire would fit inside it. I never thought I'd find ten minutes' worth of anything to say to him or any other Baggins (besides cousin Bilbo, of course). And yet yesterday I sat talking with him all day and half the night. I never thought anyone would look at me the way he does, as though I were the radiant queen of the North-kingdom. I never thought I would feel this sweet excitement in my heart. Most especially, I never thought that I, Primula, would ever be writing words like these! Dissatisfied with every fellow I ever met, I long ago resigned myself to an eternal spinsterhood. But over the Lithedays of this enchanted summer of 1366, everything has changed. If Drogo Baggins spoke today I would marry him tomorrow."

Within a month they were engaged, and on a crisp windy day in late September, the leaves golden and the sky high and clear, they stood at the Three-Farthing Stone in the presence of their families—Tooks, Brandybucks, Bagginses, and Bolgers—and vowed to forsake all others and to live together, come what may. From there the wedding-party retired to _The Heather and Bees, _an eating-house on the East Road. The lawyers from Hobbiton and Bucklebury had already arrived and set up shop. The red ink flowed and the seven witnesses signed seven times that the marriage had taken place. 

_"It's a serious business," _Mum wrote, _"declaring before all that you are a family, that you are prepared to take your place in the history and commerce of the Shire. It feels so much more important than I ever imagined watching others getting married. But it's the reason all the relations gather, why the seldom-seen cousins appear, why the wine flows and the food never stops—and why the solemn unending legalities must be endured. We have made both a covenant and a contract with our families and with the future of our people. Our names and our lines will live on. And there'll be young hobbits to till the land until the ending of the world. At least we hope there will. As you might expect, Cousin Bilbo wasn't taking any chances. As we drove off for our honeymoon, he ran up alongside the carriage, flinging at us a bottle of Old Winyards, which Drogo caught, and a basketful of midwives' herbs, which landed in my lap. With a jolly wink he said, 'You'd better get right on it!'"_

Mum took her new husband to live at Brandy Hall, and at first she seemed to have a bit of trouble getting used to him: _"Asphodel says not to worry about the sudden awkward spells. Married happiness requires patience, effort, willingness to overlook much and to forgive more. But above all it requires time. One can be so, well, familiar with this person by night, and the next morning look at him and think, Who is this stranger, and what is he doing sharing my breakfast?"_

Weeks later, she wrote, _"My husband is kind and patient. Never once have I seen him lose his temper. My brothers can be so cruel sometimes, behaving like bumpkins even though they come from better and they know it. But Drogo takes it all in stride. 'I don't care about them,' he says. 'I'd put up with dragons at my doorstep every morning, just to spend my days and nights with you, Primmie.'"_

And months after that, Frodo felt Mum's happy excitement as he read: _"My baby quickened! I was sitting by the River with my dearest Drogo, the lilacs in bloom all about us, and all at once I had the queerest feeling, as though little feet had just found purchase on the inside of my belly and had pushed off swimming. Hours later, and it hasn't stopped. Does every new mother feel such power and joy when her child wakes up inside her?"_

Later, _"Oh, he is beautiful, the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Drogo holds him for hours on end, just gazing on him in stunned adoration. We are besotted with him."_

He turned the pages rapidly, eager to read about himself. _"He is no ordinary child. His mind is keen and his heart is as great as his dad's. Some days I am certain he is a hero and a lore-master of the Elder Days, returned to life in the body of my son, my sweet Frodo, my blue-eyed one. Most days, though, he is a hobbit-lad through and through, as rough and tumble as my brothers and with more bruises than a windfallen apple. I would have prevented every one of those bruises if I could. _

"But Mennie says you can't protect them from all the world's mischances, and even if you could it's wrong to try. Got to toughen them up, she says. They don't suffer, they don't grow, she says. She means well, but it seems old-fangled to me. My sweet boy is already so Elven-wise, and like his Dad he could not possibly grow any more loving. No, whatever Mennie says, may I never, never see him come to harm. I would die first."

I would die first. His heart stopped at those words, and he was suddenly wrenched out of the living world of the past, the precious past before the horrible thing happened, into the emptiness of the present. "Oh, Mummy," he whispered. "I'm all right. No harm has come to me. But you didn't need to die, Mummy. I wish you hadn't died. Oh, I wish you hadn't."

And kind, jolly Dad, too, with his great heart and his deep laughter—both lost in one of Mennie's so-called mischances, the worst mischance of all. He couldn't read any more. He closed the book and tied the ribbon, pressed a kiss to it and returned it to the chest. Respectfully he put everything in the sitting-room back as it had been. Clutching Laddie to his heart he made his way with sad slow steps back to Mum and Dad's bedroom. He sank onto the bed. There was a long black spell of something whose name he did not yet know, but which in years to come he would know all too well: hopelessness.

But he could not give into it, not yet. He was the only one left. After a long time he roused himself, and with gentle care smoothed out Mum's gown, lovingly arranging each ruffle and ribbon. He went to the wardrobe and took down his favourite of Dad's waistcoats, orange and green, brightly brocaded with sun-flowers and poppies. He placed it beside Mum's gown and set Laddie there to guard them. Leaving the window unlocked behind him, he carefully crept back down Buck Hill. 

He knew he would not sleep, not when Mum's words, her voice, still flooded his heart, and the loss was so near, covering everything. All the same he crept back inside the silent Hall and peered in the Great Room, where even in slumber his cousins mumbled and giggled. It was no good for him now. He wandered back out into the cold, made his way down to the embankment and settled himself against the trunk of a massive oak that sent gnarled roots out into the river. It was a friendly tree; roots and trunk had been worn smooth by generations of Brandybucks doing this very thing. But like everything else in Middle-earth at that hour, it was asleep. Nothing was wakeful but himself and Brandywine, who seemed to whisper words of sorrow and remorse as she flowed endlessly past.

There, in the chilly depths of the night, the full weight of it descended upon him: he was an orphan. An orphan! Could anything be more lonely and terrifying? His grief, which before had seemed like a hot wind, shape-shifted now into a vast green wave, a thing that he had never seen or imagined, and yet somehow he knew what it was. And he knew that if he allowed one tear to fall, only one, that wave would break over Middle-earth and everyone and everything would drown, just like Mum and Dad. No one else must die that terrible death! It was up to him and him alone to stop it, to preserve the world. He put up barrier upon barrier of will and determination against that flood.

But every night, for a long time afterwards, he broke into Mum and Dad's rooms. He would take out Mum's books and spend hours by candlelight reading her wonderful words. Then he would leave his parents the small gifts he had brought them: bunches of flowers or dry leaves, nuts or seeds or stones, arranging them carefully upon the waistcoat and the gown. He hoped that wherever they had gone, Mum and Dad would know that he was trying to tell them, in the only way that he could, _I shall always remember you—I shall always miss you—I shall always love you. _

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

NOTES on Chapter Two 

_"The red ink flowed and the seven witnesses signed seven times that the marriage had taken place..." _—Tolkien makes several mentions of lawyers in early drafts of _LotR, _and of course the firm of Grubb, Grubb, and Burrowes is managing the auction of Bilbo's property at the end of _The Hobbit. _Tolkien notes the hobbit preference for meticulous legal correctness in "Concerning Hobbits," but doesn't get much chance to show it once the story gets going. 

_"His grief, which before had seemed like a hot wind, shape-shifted now into a vast green wave..." _—Frodo catches a stray bit of Faramir's (and Tolkien's) terrifying recurrent dream of the wave that drowned Númenor. 


	3. The Orphan

Chapter Three: The Orphan 

Author's Note: At this point in its mythological/historical progression, Middle-earth's circles are the finite dimensions of the globe. Aman has been removed and can only be reached via the Straight Road. Middle-earth now either orbits Arien, the Sun, or is about to begin doing so as the Age of Men commences. Whether its inhabitants were aware of all this or not is another question, of course; chances are the more inquisitive and informed among them would be.

~~~~~ 

_And it is said that in that feast of the Spring of Arda Tulkas espoused Nessa the sister of Oromë, and she danced before the Valar upon the green grass of Almaren. _—Quenta Silmarillion 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yule came with hoarfrost and the soil black and hard. Cousin Saradoc came with it. He was Rory and Mennie's eldest son, a golden giant of a hobbit and as dashing as an ancient hero of the North-kingdom. He was often gone from the Hall, off to the Southfarthing or the White Downs studying local climates, improved seed-stock, and the peculiarities of grange politics: the sorts of things that would equip him for one day becoming Master of Buckland.

Whenever Saradoc came home the cousins bounced and squealed and scrambled all over him. He always brought them a story and a song or two, a squeeze or a good-natured cuff on the shoulder, and a pocketful of presents from far-off corners of the Shire. On this visit, however, his time with the Great Room mob was brief. "You all run along now," he told them, after everyone had gotten their treats—an immense bronze chestnut from Bindbole Wood and a stick of sugar-candy from Longbottom—but no stories, and no songs. "Go off and be good to your parents today," he said. "Where is Frodo? Why isn't he here?"

"He's hiding," Melba said. "That's all he does any more, hide."

"Well, go find him for me."

They scattered, and Frodo emerged from behind the tall stack of firewood beside the hearth. It comforted him to be near his cousins, but he never joined in songs or games any more, and in every queue his chosen place was last. So it was a good place to hide. "Here I am," he said.

"Frodo! I'm glad to see you. Come join me, lad. For however long it lasts, we've got the Great Room to ourselves."

Saradoc had saved a chestnut and a sweet for him. Frodo murmured, "Thank you, cousin," and put them in his pocket without looking at them.

Saradoc studied him intently. "Well," he said finally, "they said you were awfully pale, and I do agree. You're thin, too—particularly for a Baggins! You're not getting enough to eat, are you, Frodo?"

Frodo shrugged and looked down at his lap.

"Now, my dad would never allow any hobbit living under his roof to go hungry. And my ma must have decided you're too big to force-feed. Otherwise she'd have done it, make no mistake."

"Yes."

"And Ezzie tells me she comes and finds you for every meal. But even she can't persuade you to eat, and that distresses her very much. She's afraid that left to your own devices you're going to just drift off and fade like a wisp of fog. 'We can't have that!' she says. 'Frodo is too good a hobbit to lose. The Shire needs him. All Middle-earth needs him.' A curious but highly _Esmeralda _thing to say, wouldn't you agree?"

Frodo looked up in surprise, not at Ezzie's defending him, but at the realization that lately, whenever they got the chance, Ezzie and Saradoc were off somewhere together. Folk said Ezzie would never marry. She was beautiful and accomplished, but headstrong. At her coming-of-age, when hobbit hearts were hottest, she had rejected every suitor who came along. Now she was a verging-upon-spinsterly forty-four, almost the age that Primula Brandybuck had been that enchanted summer of 1366. "She reminds me so much of my Mum," Frodo said. "She has been so kind to me."

"Of course she has. She loves you, Frodo. And anyway, Ezzie is a jewel and a queen among hobbits." There was such a smile in Saradoc's voice as he spoke that Frodo thought at once of Mum's words: _"I never thought anyone would look at me the way he does, as though I were the radiant queen of the North-kingdom." _"Are you going to marry her?" Frodo said abruptly.

"For my part, yes. For hers, well, I doubt very much she'll have me," Saradoc said, with a wink. "Though I have made arguments in my attempts to convince her that would do a lawyer proud. But for now let's talk about you, and this business of not eating. It's not natural for a hobbit, you know that. And it's not like you haven't got folk looking after you: you're reminded about meals, you're welcomed, you're expected. And still you're too thin. So are you simply forgetting to eat?"

"I suppose I am."

"Just as you're forgetting to smile and to laugh?"

"I'm sorry, cousin," Frodo said sadly, wishing he could please them all.

"Oh, you needn't apologize to me! But Ma and the aunties are in an everlasting tetter about it, you know." 

Frodo squeezed his eyes shut and did not respond.

Saradoc placed a hand on his shoulder, warm and solid. "No, Frodo, I understand perfectly why you have withdrawn from all the things that used to give you joy. I can't imagine—no, I can't imagine any of it, bless you, cousin. I'm sorry this thing happened to you. It can't be changed, it can't be mended, and we don't know what to do. We want to help but we're helpless and in grief ourselves. You've been hit the hardest, though, poor lad."

Frodo looked up then, past Saradoc and the Great Room ceiling with its immense curved beams. He waved his hand toward the nearest window and the grey winter sky beyond, trying vainly to tell his cousin his unending feeling of loss: _"It is so empty and cold." _Saradoc did not reply, just kept his hand resting on Frodo's shoulder. Frodo placed his own hand over it, longing for the day when his cousin would come home to stay. The Hall seemed a little less lonely, now that he was here.

~~~~~ 

Saradoc kept Frodo at his side all that Yuletide, and, bless him, he refrained from constantly urging Frodo to eat. But still it was very hard at the turn of the year, now that Mum and Dad were gone. Of all the occasions hobbits found for merrymaking, Yule was Dad's favourite. "Have you ever noticed, Frodo," he said once, "that right about midnight on First Yule there's an instant when everything—the sky, the trees, the earth—seems to pause? Your mum says our world is a great globe, though it seems flat to us because it's so much bigger than we are. It hangs suspended in the Void amid the Moon and Stars and Sun. For half the year it seems bit by bit to turn away from the Sun and her light until, when the moment of greatest darkness comes, it's though the world halts, catches its breath, thinks better of the entire thing, and turns back. The days get longer and the weather gets warmer.

"But Yule heralds something even more important than oncoming spring. Your mum says that there are great forces of light and darkness in our world. We can't see them, but they are in constant strife with one another. The sun's return is a sign that, in the end, the forces of light will win. I'm not as good with words as she is, but that's how I understand it. The important thing to remember, Frodo, is that there's more to Yule than the feasts and songs and play-acting."

As though his recollections had provided the cue for the entertainment to begin, the throng in the Great Room suddenly went quiet. In the clear firelit space before the hearth three musicians appeared, drums and flutes at the ready. But no players in ribbons and masks came bounding out; there was only the muffled sound of bells, so high and faint they seemed to come from far away, as a springle-ringer cloaked from head to foot in grey took her place in the flickering half-circle of light.

This was not usual for wintertime. Springle-ringing was for planting and harvest, for weddings and birthday-parties in the warm seasons—and for choosing a lover at Lithedays. Who was this dancing on the darkest night of the year? For an instant Frodo saw not a hobbit but a tall figure, lithe yet majestic, cloaked in mystery. He blinked and the illusion passed, but it left him shivering, not so much with fear as with awe. He had seen many such figures, and not only in his dreams. In fact, upon glancing at Saradoc just now, Frodo saw not his cousin but a tall, big-shouldered Man with a golden beard. He quickly looked away, afraid that he had gone out of his head with sorrow.

In silence the dancer let drop her cloak. A hand reached from the crowd to draw it from the firelit stage. Esmeralda, all in green, stood with her eyes cast down and her hands, palms flat, crossed over her breast, so motionless that the hundreds of tiny silver bells she wore made no more sound than the whisper of a breeze.

At a signal heard only by themselves the musicians began a slow drum-pattern, barely faster than a heartbeat. Slowly and gracefully Ezzie opened one arm, and the bells on her fingers were like soft rain as she lightly, almost imperceptibly, shook her hand. Slowly she unfurled her other arm, her fingers, hands and wrists taking up the motion. Slowly she raised her head. She wore a garland of bells and ribbons bound across her brow, and a blaze of her name-jewels at her throat. The flute joined the drumbeats in an intricate knot of rhythm and melody, gradually accelerating, until all of Ezzie's bells were in motion, cascading like showers of March rain.

They rang wild and sparkling as she whirled. Her colour was high, her lips and cheeks crimson, and her eyes flashed, green as the swirling velvet fog of her gown. Her thick dark hair swirled behind her, and diamonds, set just inside the points of her ears, were tiny streaks of flame.

Everyone stared open-mouthed in awe and delight. Saradoc, at Frodo's side, sat straight and expectant. Could it be that his arguments had won his cousin's heart and hand after all? It seemed too much to hope for, and yet it was most unlike Ezzie to dance for love at Yule or any other time. She was a creature of intelligence rather than passion. But with a leap of hope and an almost-forgotten joy, sharper than pain, Frodo thought of Mum and Dad falling in love. He prayed with all his heart that it was so: that Ezzie had come to claim Saradoc, and be claimed.

The drums were like thunder now, the flute melody a jagged descent like lightning, the bells a flooding downpour. Ezzie's face glowed as she danced in the golden crescent of light. She seemed to burn with an Elvish fire, and yet there could be nothing more hobbitlike than springle-ringing, grounded like every other art of the Shire-folk in the land, the clan, the smial, the hearth, the marriage-bed, the cradle, the green grave-mound.

The music ended as abruptly as it began. Ezzie stood before Saradoc and bowed deeply. Then she vanished in the upwelling of applause and the sudden congratulatory surge.

Aunt Mennie was there, embracing her son and weeping. "Oh," she said, "I never saw anything like that, not since I chose your father at harvest all those years ago. You're a lucky, lucky hobbit, son."

"It's a good match," Rory said gruffly, landing an affectionate punch on Saradoc's shoulder, then awkwardly turning away.

Frodo was engulfed for the moment by the throng of well-wishers. He felt tears welling, and fought them back. His beloved cousins were moving out of the darkness of mourning into the bright happiness of a wedding. For them the world turned once more. Desperately he wished he could join them. But it was not allowed, not yet, maybe never.

The crowd thinned at last, and he was once again alone with Saradoc. Frodo hung his head, not knowing what to say, his heart still in winter. Formally and politely, he extended his hand. "Congratulations, cousin," he managed, and he didn't think his voice quavered too badly.

Saradoc took Frodo's hand in his own big kindly one and shook it. Then he ruffled Frodo's hair and pulled him close and held him. "Don't give up hope, Frodo-lad," he said. "You'll know joy again. It won't always be so dark for you. And one fine day some lucky lass is going to wed the best hobbit in the Shire—next to me, of course. You'll see."

~~~~~ 

They wasted no time in becoming engaged. It happened at the big noon banquet on Second Yule, just before the roast goose. Saradoc caught up with Esmeralda as she made her way across the crowded hall, a glass of wine in each hand. "To your dance of last night I reply yes," he said. "Whatever prompted you to do that, Ezzie? I thought you didn't want to marry me. I thought you considered me too young and too silly."

"I had a dream," she said. Today she seemed a plain hobbit-lady in a simple grey frock. Only the diamonds glinting in her ears gave a hint of the wild fiery creature of the night before. "It caused me to change my mind. That's all I'll say about it. Am I to assume that you have spoken, then?"

"Yes," Saradoc said, "I have spoken. More than once, you know. At least fifty times, I'd say."

"And I have answered," Ezzie said. "Only once, but once is all that is necessary. Yes." They kissed, chastely but earnestly, beneath the immense branching chandeler hung with holly and mistletoe. Every Brandybuck in the place roared and cheered. They drew apart and looked deeply into one another's eyes for a moment, and then they did something completely unexpected: without exchanging a word they both turned toward Frodo, reached out to him and drew him into their embrace. Heart pounding, dizzy with hope and uncertainty, he shyly slipped an arm about each of their waists: Esmeralda and Saradoc, who with their love seemed to heal—a little—the raw gaping wound in the world.

~~~~~

As it always did, Yule ended. It took three weeks to wash all the dishes and even longer to sweep the last pine needles from the corners. Winter set in hard and cold, and there was nothing to look forward to but spring, still two months off, and the wedding, even further off than that. Saradoc departed for the Northfarthing to learn the ways of the malters and brewers. Esmeralda departed for Tuckborough to make her wedding-clothes and to spend her final weeks with her family before Saradoc adopted her into his. Once again the days were dreary and the nights heartachingly sad, as Frodo drank in all he could get of his parents through his Mum's stories. If possible he felt even more lonely than before.

After a late but fierce snowstorm, with the world glowing blue-white and the snow scrunching under his feet, Frodo went rooting through the dustbins out behind Buck Hill. Amid the egg shells, sodden tea leaves, and broken mathoms he found a handful of glass beads, a pretty blue like mum's eyes. He melted snow in his hands to wash them off. They glittered against his outstretched palms in the dazzling winter sunshine. Tonight he would leave them for Mum and Dad. As if to reassure himself that everything was as it should be, he glanced up at his window. 

It was flung wide open, the cold February air pouring in. He stuffed the beads in his pocket and ran inside and up the tunnel, nearly flattening two young cousins in his haste. Mum and Dad's door stood ajar. To his dismay the rooms were filled with daylight and with shrill female voices. Aunt Mennie and Aunt Amaranth had invaded, together with a gaggle of housemaids wielding washclouts, dustpans, and brooms.

Mennie saw him in the doorway. "Why, of course," she exclaimed. "Here's the one who's been bringing all these messy sticks and leaves in here. I have no idea what you were thinking, Frodo, but bless me, what a job of work you left us, what with the wedding coming up and all. Well, well, I thought as much, didn't I tell you so, Amaranth? Suspected it all along, in fact. But I didn't go tattling to Rory on you, lad; he doesn't know, and for your sake let's keep it that way. He'd never have the heart to beat you at such a happy time, though the dear knows you've earned it, defying him like this—"

The ladies had swept his gifts away, and in a great flurry of bedsheets and billowing curtains they were stripping the rooms bare.

"But don't worry, lad," Mennie went on gaily. "We aren't turning you out. Amaranth has a spare room, and that's going to be your home now. Go on, now, be off with you. Go!"

Aunt Amaranth, even more sour-faced than usual, came at him with her broom raised like she meant to do something much more violent with it than sweep him out the door. She hated boys. Frodo fled to the Great Room and slipped behind the woodpile. He hugged his knees, shaking all over with a feeling that he had known so seldom in his young life he hardly recognized it: he was angry.

Was this, then, the end of Mennie's _decent interval? _Barely more than half a year? What about respecting the dead and their things? Of course Rory owned Brandy Hall and everything in it, and he was completely within his rights to give the rooms to anyone he chose. All the same, it was like a blow to the chest. Frodo felt hurt, betrayed—and _robbed. _Saradoc would never do this to him, never! And Ezzie would throw a fit if she knew. But she was far away, and by the time she got back to Buckland and saw her bridal suite, it would be too late. Only the curving walls and round windows would remain. All other trace of Mum and Dad would be gone.

~~~~~ 

It happened just as he imagined. Frodo was not consulted, being only a teenager. But he watched it all, standing off to one side, ignored and forlorn. The rooms were cleared and painted over. All their possessions, Dad's pipes and jolly waistcoats, Mum's dresses and hair-jewels and combs, were packed in a big mathom-trunk and stored in one of the sheds out behind the pony-barn.

Even Laddie was carted off before Frodo could find him, destined with the rest to be food for moths and mice. All that was spared was the desk and the chest with the runes that held Mum's journals. These did not fit in the small dark room off Amaranth's pantry that held the sway-backed cot where Frodo was to sleep. They ended up in her kitchen, where she complained bitterly about them every day. She eyed the jewel-inlaid chest with considerable interest, however.

Aunt Amaranth and her rooms smelled of coal tar, and she grudged Frodo tea or anything else from her cupboard. This hardly mattered, because he had no appetite. He spent as much time away from there as he could, sleeping in the Great Room when the nights were still chilly, staying out all night once the weather was fine.

It was a mistake. His aunt concluded that the arrangement was off, and dealt with Frodo's meagre possessions accordingly. She gave the desk to Uncle Saradas, who had built it for Mum in the first place. She took the chest that had held Mum's journals to keep her knitting things in, and as for the contents—

"Frodo!" Melba had squeezed behind the woodpile and was shaking him awake. "Aunt Amaranth is up to something. You'd better go and see."

There in his aunt's dark little rooms, Amaranth and Uncle Saradas stood feeding the fire from a two-foot-high stack of letters and papers. By a trick of his eyesight, which grief and dread had distorted, Frodo thought he could read the actual writing on one of the doomed papers, just before it dissolved into ashes:

_"As fair as an elf-child, and gentle and kind,  
Yet as brave as a warrior, with a high and deep mind." _His anger awoke fully. Feet and fists flying, he hurled himself at Saradas. His uncle hurled him right back out the door and across the tunnel, slamming him into the wall opposite. "You let your elders and betters do what needs to be done," Saradas cried from the doorway.

"Those are my things. I didn't want them burned. You should have asked me," Frodo gasped, all the wind knocked out of him.

"Asked you what? You're a boy. You own nothing here."

With a scream of hinges and a cloud of dust Saradas flung the door shut.

~~~~~

He dreamed of running away. He wondered how far he'd get. Being a child, he had no money of his own. He wondered if his parents had left him anything. If they had, nobody had told him. Fervently he hoped that Rory, who was his guardian now, had his best interests at heart. But it certainly did not feel that way, and it made him anxious and fearful about the future.

Often he found himself thinking about Dad's people, in and around Hobbiton far off to the west, and wondering why they didn't send for him. He knew that Mum and Dad had taken him to visit the Westfarthing when he was a baby, but he didn't remember it. He knew that the Bagginses had come to Buckland for Mum and Dad's burial, among them the infamous mad uncle Bilbo, but he didn't remember that either. It would have been a regular Shire wake, with no end of food, and relations arriving from all over to mourn the dead and to speculate on who was to inherit what, followed by the solemn journey in procession to the graveyard at Newbury. But whenever he tried to recall those terrible dark days after the accident, Frodo's mind slid away.

In any event, it seemed quite plain that the Bagginses didn't want him, either.

~~~~~

In the weeks that followed, Frodo became acutely aware of what it was to be homeless. He wandered lost and empty through the tunnels that once had held the world. While looking for some corner to call his own, he found himself in parts of Brandy Hall he had hardly known existed. There were basement chambers down behind the Hill and toward the River, where a number of the men of the Hall sat day and night in a reek of pipeweed and ale, among them his two bachelor uncles Dodinas and Dinodas.

Uncle Do and Uncle Di were jolly fellows, the knee-slapping throw-you-in-the-air-and-catch-you sort of uncle, and they were always happy to have his company. They at least paid some attention to him, though the cost of their attention was high: they'd get him tipsy or ply him with pipeweed and then laugh uproariously as he coughed and choked. In their cups they'd say hurtful, distressing things about everyone he loved. He remembered Mum complaining to Dad about their endless drinking, their deplorable lack of worthwhile work to do. She'd always carefully kept Frodo away from their influence. But now she was not there to protect him--or herself.

It was a bitter night, and he ventured into the stifling hole to get some warmth. The uncles soon had him so woozy that of its own accord his head sank onto the grimy, sticky tabletop.

"Poor little chap," he heard Dodinas say. "Poor wretched little chap."

"Life's ruined, you know," Dinodas said. "No one wants to say so, but it is."

"Aye. And all because his parents couldn't keep their hands off each other."

At this, Frodo awoke from his doze, but filled with curiosity and dread as to what he might hear, he didn't move.

"And at their age! Primmie was much too long in the tooth to be carrying on like that, if you ask me," Dinodas said. "But that's why the moonlight sail. They were trying to get in the mood to make a baby hobbit, if you can believe it." "Those two? Weren't they always in the mood?" Dodinas clucked. "At sixty, Primmie ought to have been settling down and looking forward to the grandchildren. I know she didn't look a day over forty, but still—"

"Well, and that husband of hers! If Drogo had ever done a thing in his life besides eat and smoke, maybe he wouldn't of made that boat sink like a rock."

"Aye. _There's _a hobbit that never lifted a finger or earned an honest day's living. Poor Primmie! Such a comedown for her when she found out! How humiliating to have to come crawling back home to live."

"Typical Baggins trick, though—find yourself a rich lass, marry up and let the wife support you."

"Or the wife's relations, more likely."

"And do you know what's worse? That ne'er-do-well lout, living off his in-laws, left the boy nothing. Nothing, do you believe it? Not a brass button or a penny piece—and the dear knows it took enough of _them _to fasten a waistcoat over Drogo's belly—brass buttons, I mean."

"That's for certain! The wonder is that Rory doesn't turn that little half-Brandybuck out. He's got enough of the real thing to feed as it is."

"That he does. And do you know what they say? They say the boy was the real cause of it all. _He _was the reason for the sail. Had to have a brother or sister, he did, just like his cousins. Insisted on it, don't you know. Wouldn't shut up about it, in fact. Spoilt as sour milk, if you ask me. If I were Rory, I'd—"

His heart aching, Frodo went on pretending he was asleep. He waited for his uncles to fall into rafter-rattling drunken snores, then he got up and ran out into the night. He sat down beneath the oak tree at the River's edge, no longer minding the cold. Those two seemed to have dug deep inside him and brought wriggling forth his blackest suspicions, his vilest imaginings. And to say those things about his parents, as though it was something bad and wrong that they loved each other so much!

And was it true his dad was a penniless ne'er-do-well? Mennie and Rory would know. Frodo knew he ought to go to them, but he steeled his mind against it. He'd had enough of being reproached by Mennie—and _locked out _by Rory. He felt all too keenly that under their guardianship, his life was indeed in ruins.

He wished he had been in the boat with Mum and Dad on that terrible summer night.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

NOTES on Chapter Three 

_"It is so empty and cold." _—After the death of his wife Edith, Tolkien wrote to their son Michael: "I remember trying to tell [my cousin] Marjorie Incledon this feeling, when I was not yet thirteen after the death of my mother (Nov. 9.1904), and vainly waving a hand at the sky, saying, 'It is so empty and cold.'" Letter #332, 24 January 1972.

_"Amaranth and Uncle Saradas stood feeding the fire from a two-foot-high stack of letters and papers." _—From Tolkien–A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter: "Aunt Beatrice [Suffield] gave him and his brother board and lodging, but little more. She had been widowed not long before, and she was childless and poorly off. Sadly, she was also deficient in affection, and she showed little understanding of the boys' state of mind. One day Ronald came into her kitchen, saw a pile of ashes on the grate, and discovered that she had burnt all his mother's personal papers and letters. She had never considered that he might wish to keep them." 


	4. The Thief

Chapter Four: The Thief

Author's Note: This telling is based on material in The Return of the Shadow.

~~~~~

_...there were murmured hints of creatures more terrible than all these, but they had no name. _—The Lord of the Rings, Book One

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Stealing is the shadow in the heart of hobbit-kind. It comes quite naturally to creatures so deft-handed and sharp-eyed, so silent when they wish to be. That shadow was at work the day Déagol the Stoor found the One Ring glinting in the gladden beds near Anduin, and lost it—and his life—to his cousin Sméagol. Years later it sustained Sméagol-Gollum after Ring-lust drove him from the shelter of the Misty Mountains: as the Red Book tells, _"The wood was full of the rumour of him...a ghost that drank blood. It climbed trees to find nests; it crept into holes to find the young; it slipped through windows to find cradles." _ Others of their kind survived the long migration across Eriador by helping themselves to whatever they could find along the way. Once they settled in the fertile Shire this natural gift went underground, but it was never lost. It was Bilbo Baggins's chief—indeed, his only—qualification for the quest of Erebor, at least in the minds of his Dwarven employers. But its clearest manifestation, after a thousand years of settled so-called respectability, was the unceasing pilfering by hobbit teenagers and tweenagers of fruits, nuts, vegetables, eggs, pasties, pies, cakes, and so on.

Therefore it was nothing out of the ordinary when teenage Frodo Baggins began going on solitary marauding raids in the deeps of the night. What _was _out of the ordinary, at least to the owners of the tongues that wagged about it from Willowbottom to the Hay Gate, was to see poor dead Miss Primula's son grown to be so silent and angry and _thin, _when he had always been such a cheerful boy and kind too, not a mean bone in his sturdy body.

~~~~~

Frodo had always felt himself immensely lucky to be growing up in Brandy Hall. It was his world. And when Mum and Dad were alive he was the centre of it, grandmothered with hugs and sweets by Mennie and bounced on Rory's knee like he was Rory's own. If his aunt and uncle now seemed harsh and preoccupied, it was because they were in grief themselves. Saradoc had said so, and therefore it must be true.

But Saradoc had also said that he and Ezzie were coming back to live at the Hall. They never had. After their wedding—which at the last moment, in one of those baffling and devastating changes of mood that often possessed the grownups, Rory and Mennie had refused to let Frodo attend—his favourite cousins were off to the North Moors. There was trouble with outsiders even in that empty country, and the Mayor had sent Saradoc to the aid of its sheepherders and crofters.

Two years went by. Frodo was now big enough to fend for himself. He spent much of his time alone, outdoors; there was some comfort in being under the sky, gazing up through the net of the trees or letting his eyes wander the glittering path of the stars. He supported himself in the time-honoured way, sampling all the produce of western Buckland. He did not go into eastern Buckland, where the graves were. Aunt Mennie had taken him there twice, and both visits had left him mute and withdrawn for weeks.

Nor did he venture over the River anywhere near Bucklebury, where you could only cross by boat or ferry. The accident had left him hating the once-beloved Brandywine, and what was worse, fearing it, a fear that as a Bucklander he knew he must conquer.

It was hard enough the first time he hurried across the Brandywine Bridge alone, on foot, no safe carriage to ride in as the water below went roiling and plashing in its tumbled journey through the great stone arches. The Bridge was wide and solid, as solid as the King of old who had built it, who would (it was said) return one day to rule in equity and peace. This was of very little comfort to Frodo in the present, however. Yet with repeated effort he mastered his fears, and was rewarded with all the fresh plunder of the Bridgefields, the wide lands west of the Bridge.

After a hard winter spent living off the thin hospitality of the Hall, he began to cast his eyes longingly upon the Marish. It was twenty miles by land, by River only a ten-minute crossing. He forced himself to ride the Ferry until the brown water swirling endlessly around him no longer made him think of death. He became skilled at manoeuvering small boats and rafts in the darkness, determined to master the currents that had robbed him of his parents and all his surety in the world.

And now, in his fourteenth summer, the Marish in all its bliss opened up before him. It was a joy to explore: vast, marshy, fragrant with mud and decay; peopled with otters and brocks, cranes and frogs and dragonflies. Its uplands and drained croplands grew the fattest carrots and radishes, turnips and potatoes anywhere. But best of all were the mushrooms.

~~~~~

_The lofty beeches and the gnarled almighty oaks–these are the noblest of the Olvar, the plants: the works of Yavanna who made Arda abundant with green and flowering life. When Melkor strewed death over the young earth, Yavanna countered not with trees even more towering yet, but with the small and secret things of the mould: tiny creatures that devour mortal remains and return them benign and transformed to the soil, lending it fertility, renewing life. Among these, the fungi flourished and developed pale stems and gilled caps that pushed through to the light, their odd-looking forms evoking intense curiosity in Ilúvatar's children. Ever eager to thwart Yavanna, Melkor succeeded in poisoning a few of these, rendering them deadly to the Children. But thanks to Yavanna's ceaseless vigilance he did not corrupt them all. Of those she preserved, one species of the younger world, whose name is not now known, grew large succulent crowns, as rich and toothsome as meat. By some chance the scent and flavour of these "mushrooms" were like strong wine to the Hobbit people: attractive and addictive._

~~~~~

They grew wild in rare dry corners of the Marish, and Frodo tasted them all, but his nose led him deeper and deeper toward what must be the very centre from which emanated all the mushroomy goodness of Middle-earth. After slogging for mile after mile through tussocks and bogs, with that exhilarating fragrance growing stronger by the moment, he was brought to an abrupt stop. He had arrived at a whitewashed wall, much higher and stouter than normal, that ran ungated for miles in either direction. The meaty scent that wafted from beyond it overpowered his senses. The wall was smooth, deliberately crafted to baffle young fingers and toes, with chinks and fissures too small even for a hobbit's sharp eyes. But it was no match for Frodo, who had recovered all his old burglary skills and more; he would need them once he came of age and was cast penniless upon the world. Groping his way to the top, his fingers met a jagged parapet of broken bottles cruelly embedded in the plaster. These troubled him not at all. He catapulted over them and found himself in an earthly paradise.

As far as he could see there were mushrooms half as tall as he, with stems as thick as a hobbit's arm and caps as big as a hobbit's head. He'd brought an old flour sack pilfered from the granary, and at first he was careful to cull the lovely things from widely separated corners of the field. He thought he was being very clever, that no one would detect his depradations. He did not consider that any farmer worth his salt—and old Maggot was worth a good deal more than that—would have counted each cap more lovingly than the fingers and toes of his newborn children.

When Frodo had filled his bag to bulging he scaled the wall and fled south across country to the outskirts of the village of Rushy, where tall reeds grew right up to the edge of town. A number of the village householders kept butteries at the back of their properties, small round windowless buildings with conical thatched roofs, built right over the cool wetness of the Marish. As you might expect, they were secured with numerous locks and chains, but these were no match for Frodo's keen hearing and clever fingers.

There were cured meats and slabs of butter and wheels of delightful cheese within their damp echoing walls. From one particularly well-stocked buttery he chose several thick rashers of bacon. Then he replaced the locks and fled out across the marshes until he could see no more farm lights in any direction. From his pack he took out the knife, skillet, and tinder he had lifted from the Hall pantries. He coaxed a fire from a few dry twigs and threw the bacon and mushrooms on the skillet. The fat popping and sizzling, and the rich brothy aroma of the mushrooms, carried him to another time and place, and though they deepened his ever-present sadness, they also brought him great comfort. He could close his eyes and relive first breakfasts in the old rooms at Brandy Hall, Mum holding him in her lap while Dad bustled at the stove: three hobbits living in a timeless realm of joy and contentment, unaware of what was to come.

He returned to that field the following night, and the next and the next, until he knew he had long passed the point of concealing his raids, and the farm dogs howled in the distance. The butteries he chose carefully and plundered sparingly, leaving each family more than enough bacon for their breakfasts for weeks to come. There were Rules, even for thieves.

But he showed no mercy to the mushrooms.

For their part they seemed to welcome his attentions. They began calling to him with earthy, crumbly voices, begging him to pluck them and ravish them. They played with his senses and stirred in him desires they had no intention of satisfying, for then he would not keep coming back for them again and again and again....

This could not have gone on for more than a few days. Yet for all he knew it went on for months. So long as the mushrooms had him under their spell, there was no sense of time passing, no thought of the farmer or his dogs, no memory of rightness or wrongness or Rules.

Until the night the spell broke. He had flung his sack over his shoulder and was halfway up the wall when suddenly there was a loud cry of "Hoy!"

His heart seizing painfully, Frodo fell into the mud on his backside. The enchantment was over, and he was in trouble. A ring of slavering, snarling dogs surrounded him. From beyond them four figures, black against the stars, advanced toward him. To Frodo in his terror they seemed ten times bigger than hobbits. The tallest of them broke through the growling ring, and with a sharp gesture brought the dogs to heel. Frodo let out his breath. It _was _only a hobbit after all, though a hobbit he should not have been trifling with: Maggot, the one farmer in the district who bucked Rory's authority every chance he got.

"Who are you?" Maggot growled.

Frodo threw his hands over his head, too frightened to answer.

"You look like Buckland trash. Answer me, boy. Who are you?"

"Frodo Baggins, sir."

"_Baggins. _The boy whose parents drowned?"

"Yes, sir."

"I see. Well, good thing for you you're an orphan—I'll not beat you to death, not _this _time, at any rate. But touch my mushrooms ever again and you'll find I've lost all charity! In the meantime, Frodo Baggins, hear me and hear me well. We don't want your kind here. Mr. Rory knows how I feel about the doings at the grange in Bucklebury, which is run to suit _his _interests and no one else's. Why should I settle for rates that for years he's kept fixed with an iron hand, when there are strangers down in the Southfarthing offering me twice them and more? Times are changing. There's new blood coming into the Shire. Old Rory isn't ready for it and he knows it. So is this how he gets back at me, sending a young relation trampling and pillaging through my fields like a platoon of goblins?"

"No, sir," Frodo said, surprised.

Maggot plucked up Frodo's bag and his pack and handed them off to his sons. He turned to the dogs. "Hoy, lads," he said. The dogs sprang up tense and alert. At a signal from Maggot they formed a circle around Frodo, growling and baring their teeth. At another signal they began advancing on him.

Frodo lay trembling violently, terrified and humiliated. The farmer and his sons regaled him with scornful laughter. When the dogs were within inches, and Frodo could feel their hot breath, Maggot stopped them with a "Stay." He seized Frodo by the scruff, lifted him right off the ground, and held him there with his feet dangling, helpless. "There, lads. Get a good look at him, and get a good scent of him."

When he was satisfied that they had done so, Maggot flung Frodo down, sprawling on his belly in the mud. "Now, lads," he said, "you see him off my land, and if he comes back again you can eat him!"

And they were after him, yelping with malicious glee, nipping at his heels, calves, and buttocks. They chased him down the length of the white wall, through the farm gate and for miles along the road to the causeway. Frodo ran so hard he thought his heart would explode. They ran him all the way to the Ferry before finally backing off.

Exhausted, he flung himself on the dock, too dizzy and nauseated to attempt the crossing.

~~~~~

He awoke sore and chilled and in grief all over again. Wearily he poled his way through the dawn mist rising from Brandywine, dragged himself up to the Hall and crawled behind the woodpile in the Great Room. All the rest of that day he sat hugging his knees, a ball of anger and misery. _"I'm sorry, Mummy," _he whispered. He knew better than to steal so greedily and selfishly that it robbed a farmer of his livelihood. Mum never had any patience with gentlehobbits who availed themselves of all the privileges of that position but none of the responsibilities. And he _was _a gentlehobbit, though penniless: tolerated but unwanted, a burden to the rich relations who allowed him to live off their charity. _Poor wretched little chap, _Uncle Dodinas had called him; he had no future, no prospects, no joy in anything—except the precious mushrooms. They were more to him than a stolen delicacy. They were the life of love and comfort he had lost.

That night they sang to him in his dreams.

The following morning he raided the pantries for fresh supplies: bag, skillet, tinder, and knife. He added a tall walking stick, which he chose from among the collection in the front vestibule. Fearlessly, in full daylight, he boarded the ferry and set off into the Marish. But he waited until dark to scale Maggot's endless wall with its razor-sharp battlements.

The dogs weren't long in arriving. He was ready for them. Frodo had begun to suspect they were too well-mannered to actually touch him. No one in the Shire kept dogs that killed hobbits. Still, it was best to seize the upper hand and keep it. This time he stood his ground, letting them see no fear. He brandished the stick at them, ferociously swinging it over their heads a time or two. They fell back and allowed him to harvest a brimming bagful, but all the while they growled morosely.

For a day, a week, another timeless interval of mushroom madness, Frodo believed he was winning. The dogs didn't like it. They had a job to do and they had always done it well—until along came this prince of thieves, who forced them to back down again and again, who arrogantly exploited their good manners, who showed no concern for the growing voids in what once had been a crop worth a fortune to their master.

~~~~~

_The mushroom-spirits laughed at them all: at the addled boy, at the brainless dogs, and at the greedy farmer who, idiotic mortal that he was, believed he had cultivated this wondrous crop himself. Rather, _it _had cultivated _him, _into a creature willing to dismantle the entire trade balance of his little rat-country if he thought it would make him richer. Melkor's servants had more than one kind of poison at their command._

~~~~~

One day the dogs appeared with a new gleam in their eyes and a new strut in their tails. They circled Frodo as they always did, ominously yet harmlessly. His bag was more than full, but he plucked still another crown just to spite them, then turned to mount the wall. Usually they made one final frustrated, impotent charge at his feet. Today they hung back, their tails switching smugly, as though anticipating a surprise they had spent days in preparing for him. When it appeared they cowered and fell back submissively, their ranks dividing.

It was yellow-eyed, grey and shaggy, dog-like in form yet bigger than any dog Frodo had ever seen. There was something in the slitted pupils of its eyes—a blackness, an emptiness—that filled him with sudden terror. This was no tame Shire-dog, ferocious in its devotion to duty but by breeding and training incapable of harming a hobbit. Had the farmer recruited some wild wolf of the north to rid his fields of the thief once and for all?

He realized that Maggot's charity had come to an end. He realized that this creature was going to kill him. He hoped that before the final darkness fell it would not hurt too dreadfully. He felt no other regret or fear. He felt nothing at all, other than a sort of sad relief.

But his hobbit-instincts refused to let him die without a fight. He took his stand with his back to the wall, holding the stick out level before him at the ready. The wolf seized it in its jaws and effortlessly shattered it. Then it drew back, cocking its head, licking its chops. It toyed with him like this again and again: approaching him, growling and sniffing, eyeing him appraisingly, then retreating. Each time it approached it seemed to loom huger, darker, its breath like a slaughter-house, its eyes dead.

He realized that this was no wolf. It was a nursery-story bogey come to life, a monster.

Vulnerable and terrified though he was, it angered him that Maggot would use such a thing in his service; it was a far worse violation of The Rules than anything Frodo had done. He made himself as tall as he could and met the creature's eye, all the while scanning the ground with the edge of his sight. Not far from his right foot, a large flat stone the size of a slab of bacon lay half-embedded in the mud.

With a sudden swift motion he plucked it up. Maggot's dogs backed off warily; they knew what it meant when a hobbit stooped to pick up a stone. But the monster, an outsider, had no fear of these small fangless halflings. It mistook Frodo's motion for the doomed struggles of its prey, for which it had further sport in store: a few sudden lunges, a few playful bites to the neck—not breaking the skin, just driving the twitching little thing into a delicious-smelling state of sweat and terror before the kill.

It lunged. With a twist of its wrist the hobbit hurled the stone. Bone met rock with a hideous crack.

For a moment Frodo, blinded by shock, was not certain who had killed whom. When his eyes finally cleared, he could make no sense of what he saw. The creature's body lay on the ground writhing and convulsing, but its head wasn't there.

At first he thought he had smashed its skull so utterly there was nothing left. As he watched in horror, a foul-smelling black steam began rising from the corpse. Bit by bit the monster faded and dissolved, leaving only a dark greasy swath upon the earth. Frodo felt sick. Of course he had meant to kill the thing if he had to; otherwise it would have killed him. But to have really done it, even in the greatest need, was unthinkable. _He had killed. _Maggot came. He saw the stolen mushrooms. He saw the remains of the wolf-dog. He saw Frodo Baggins, and his rage was boundless.

The blows fell, driving Frodo first to his knees, then face-down in the mud. Still they kept falling, heavy and hard. The dark portal of death loomed before him. He yearned to cross it and have an end to his pain and despair, but for all his struggles it grew no closer. And the blows continued, on and on in a timeless unending series, until at last his thought flickered, sputtered, and blissfully went dark.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

NOTES on Chapter 4

_"They were more to him than a stolen delicacy. They were the life of love and comfort he had lost." _—Credit is due _Angelica, _a member of the lost lamented discussion boards at Imladris.net, for first giving the author the idea that Frodo was acting out his grief by raiding Maggot's mushrooms.

_"Of course he had meant to kill the thing if he had to; otherwise it would have killed him." _—From The Return of the Shadow, Chapter XVII, "A Short Cut to Mushrooms:" "I used to trespass on his land when I was a youngster at Bucklebury. His fields used to grow the best mushrooms. I killed one of his dogs once. I broke its head with a heavy stone. A lucky shot, for I was terrified, and I believe it would have mauled me. He beat me, and told me he would kill me next time I put a foot over his boundaries: 'I'd kill you now,' he said, 'if you were not Mr. Rory's nephew, more's the pity and shame to the Brandybucks.'"


	5. Voices

Chapter Five: Voices 

_"That was touch and go: perhaps the most dangerous moment of all." _—The Lord of the Rings, Book Two 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

There was another portal, a portal of light, and the light bore upon its shoulders a cool wind, soft yet constant. 

~~~~~ 

Someone lightly placed a hand on his shoulder. Even that gentle touch was an agony. He thrashed violently to throw it off. A single voice spoke, feminine and heartbreakingly familiar. "Frodo. Frodo! What have they done to you?" 

He thought it was Mum. He thought he had died. He thought he saw a path before him, dim and shrouded in mist, and he began to run toward her. 

"Frodo, it's Esmeralda. It's Ezzie, your cousin. Frodo, can you hear me? Oh, no. Oh, no." 

He found himself back in Middle-earth. He seemed to be lying on rough splintery boards. He tried to lift his battered head, but pain and dizziness made him quickly fall back. Careful to avoid his torn shoulders, Ezzie sat him up, feeling for his pulse, caressing his brow. Desperate to be comforted, he reached out to her, groping blindly for her hand, her sleeve, anything. His fingertips met her waist. It was big and round as a melon. Ezzie was with child. Wonderingly he flattened his palm against her taut belly. She placed her own hand over his. 

"Oh, cousin," he said, and let his head fall against her lap as the blackness took him. 

~~~~~ 

There were voices threading in and out of fevered dreams. He seemed to be standing on the eastern bank of Brandywine. It was a dark moonless night, with the deep chill of late autumn. On the western bank thronged an angry mob of hobbits, shouting, shaking their fists, brandishing scythes and torches. 

~~~~~ 

"Mr. Maggot." Saradoc's pleasant tenor was urgent and intense. "My wife and I have traveled every mile of the Bounds of this country. We have seen evil things lurking just beyond them that would cause untold harm to hobbits were they not turned back by friends of our people, friends we didn't know we had." 

"And what is your point, young Master Brandybuck?" 

"Just this. Esmeralda and I have come home to find that not only has one of these nightmare creatures got through, but that you, Maggot, have taken it into your kennel and made it part of your household." 

"And what if I have?" Maggot said. "I needed a job done. The animal appeared. It served me well enough, until Master Frodo took a rock to its head." 

"Only because it would have killed him otherwise! You have kept a thing that kills, and you have turned it against a hobbit!" 

"No. I turned it against a _thief." _"So you say. And now you have attorneys lined up from here to Hardbottle. You mean to press damages upon my father and my cousin for their transgressions of The Rules. Yet you have fostered a monster in the very heart of the Shire." 

"So?" 

"So the moment your suit is settled, we are going to press ours. Hard." 

In the angry babble of voices that ensued, Frodo's thought slipped away. 

~~~~~ 

He must have been very sick. He remembered Aunt Mennie bending over him, dabbing his forehead with a cool cloth, clucking and tsk-ing as though he were nothing more than a naughty fauntling. Yet all the while silent tears were running down her face. He was aware of Ezzie lifting him, bundling him in blankets while he shook with chills. Her voice was a low murmur, soothing but with an undertone of anger. His head brushed against her belly. Her baby could come at any time. In the midst of his despair he felt a stab of joy. He saw red-cheeked Aunt Asphodel, cousin Melba's mum, tearing bandages: always such a jolly lady, now all she did was frown. He saw flaxen-haired Melba herself, her face resting next to his on the pillow, her brown eyes open wide, studying him intently. She, at least, was not clucking or frowning or weeping. "You're getting better, see," she commanded. 

But she could not keep him there, and his thought departed. He was gone for a long time. 

~~~~~ 

Once again he stood on the eastern shore of Brandywine. The tall figures that haunted his dreams stood motionless as statues on the other side, man-like and woman-like yet clothed in garments that seemed part of the mist. A clear white light shone from behind them, casting their faces into shadow. Some appeared to be looking across toward him, others looked away. 

~~~~~ 

The room was filled with everyday noises: pouring water, clinking crocks, flapping cloth. In the midst of it a baby woke up and bawled its song of hunger. _Is that my little sister, Mum? Has she come at last? _Eagerly he turned toward the baby, toward the round portal of light with its lace curtains dancing on the stiff warm breeze. The figure silhouetted against it had a mass of curls like Mum's, dark with a gleam of red about the edges. As he watched she put the baby to her breast, and the crying ceased. _My sister, my little flower. _He sank into a deep peaceful sleep. 

~~~~~ 

When he dream-woke he was standing in Maggot's field. The mushrooms were singing to him, moist and gleaming in the starlight. For a moment his yearning for them returned, and he hoped, he believed, that things could once again be as they were. 

He remembered then the dogs, and the wolf-creature, and the pain of the lashes on his back. He quickly turned his dream-face from the mushrooms and walked away. Their voices, which had been so lovely and so enchanting, rose to a discordant shriek. 

~~~~~ 

"So now we begin to reach an accord, Maggot." Rory was speaking. Frodo was wide awake, hungry as a hunter, but he kept his eyes tightly closed. The two terrible old men filled the room, their bitter debate raging right over his bed. 

"Do we?" Maggot growled. "I'm not so certain. If you pay the damages I will drop my suit, but the fact remains: those southerners, whom your Saradoc seemed to think needed rounding up and escorting to the Bounds, would have paid me twice the business-as-usual at Bucklebury grange." 

"It's not that easy, Maggot," Rory said. "You talk like a hobbit that's got hold of some mouldy leaf: you're raving. There's no raising prices at Bucklebury without paying dearly at Michel Delving. You know this. Now, then. Quote me the value of what you have lost—in _Shire _terms—and I will consider it." 

Even at a fair rate, Maggot's quote made Frodo feel ill. He opened his eyes, no longer even pretending to be asleep. What a horrible mess he had made of things! 

"Ho! He's awake at last!" Maggot gloated. "Now the thief can argue his own case." 

"Leave him out of it, Maggot. He's a boy. He's my responsibility. I'll deal with him later." 

"Yes, please, Maggot." Aunt Mennie spoke from the doorway. "Haven't you punished the poor child enough already?" 

But a queer gleam had appeared in the farmer's eye. He looked from Frodo to Rory and back again, and said, "I don't suppose this boy has any sort of a legacy?" 

"I said, leave him out of it!" Rory barked. 

"Perhaps you should be going, Mr. Maggot," Mennie said. "We haven't dropped _our _suit, you know. And we're not about to, unless—" 

Maggot opened his mouth to protest, but then he caught the look on Mennie's face and the gleam in _her _eyes. "Well, you're right, perhaps I should be going, at that," he said. He turned, hesitating, in the doorway. "But before you decide anything—about your suit, that is—well, there may be room for further discussion regarding damages and such—" 

Rory and Mennie said nothing. 

"Yes. Well. Good-bye, then." The farmer bowed nervously and departed in haste, nearly colliding with Mennie. 

When he was gone Mennie came to Frodo's side, took his hand in hers and stroked it awkwardly. Rory stood with his arms folded tight across his chest and his grizzled old features folded even tighter. 

"I'm sorry, Uncle Rory," Frodo said miserably. "If I had anything of my own, I would beg you to use it to pay Mr. Maggot for what I stole." 

"What do you mean, _if you had anything of your own?" _

"If I had a legacy." 

"What are you talking about? Of course you have a legacy. Did you suppose that any child of a Baggins and a Brandybuck would be left penniless?" 

"Of course not!" Mennie said earnestly. "Now, it's no fortune, not by a stretch, but it earns a bit of income. Rory puts it all back in against your coming-of-age. We're taking care of you, Frodo, never think for a moment that we're not." 

"Then please pay him back," Frodo said. He felt stunned and confused. "Please, Uncle." 

Rory was silent for a long time, a succession of emotions playing across his face. "Well, lad," he said at last, "I am pleased to see you offering to repair what you have done. But why did you not save us all sixteen cartloads of trouble and expense—not to mention the threat of the entire Eastfarthing rising up against us, not to mention the weeks of worrying that you were going to die from that idiot's beating—by developing this wholly admirable sense of responsibility just _a bloody damned bit sooner?" _

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." Frodo put his hands over his head and cowered beneath the blankets. 

"And in any event," Rory went on, not relenting, "if I were to spend your legacy paying your debt—and believe me, boy, it would require every penny of it and more—where do you suppose you'll be when you turn thirty-three and have nothing?" 

Suddenly Frodo sat up, ignoring the way it made his head spin. Really, they ought to have given him this information long before now! "Nothing is all I ever thought I'd have," he said hotly. "No one told me differently. No one said a single word about it except for Uncle Di and Uncle Do, who went on and on about what a worthless lout my dad was, how he left me in poverty, how I was nothing but a poor relation—" 

Rory's frown deepened. Mennie looked dumbfounded for all of an instant, but at once she recovered herself and began, "Oh. Well. _Those _two. You listen to them, you'll never want for moonshine. Dear, dear. Whatever were you thinking of, Frodo, paying a moment's worth of attention to such stuff? You should have come to us. Why didn't you come to us?" 

"Why did you let them burn my Mum's things?" Frodo said. 

"Oh!" Mennie exclaimed, all the air let out of her. There was another very long silence. "Well. They never told me they were going to do that. Why, if they had, I'd have never allowed it—" 

Rory said nothing, but he went crimson to the tips of his ears. 

Frodo turned away and buried his face. He felt heartsick and ill-used, and the room spun so horribly he had to cling by his fists to the bedsheets. He fell into a troubled sleep. 

He dreamed of a black tower, endlessly tall, piercing a sky like fire and blood. 

~~~~~ 

The baby's crying woke him. The room was chill. The breeze had died, and through the round window he could see a grey storm-filled sky. 

"Ezzie," he whispered. 

"I'm here," she said. "You've come back to us, bless you! I wouldn't blame you if you stayed away forever. I—well, I could say a thousand things, most of them unflattering, regarding my in-laws. But I live here now, so I'll keep my tongue on its leash. And there's been too much unpleasantness lately as it is. Anyway, I brought someone to meet you. He's here, he's come: your newest cousin, Meriadoc. He arrived a week ago today." 

"Meriadoc?" said Frodo, propping himself on one wobbly elbow and craning for a better look at the baby, for there is nothing that can make a hobbit forget all pains and fears like the arrival in this world of a brand new hobbit. 

"A large name for such a little person, don't you think? Rory chose it, from what mildewed old book of Buckland lore I couldn't guess. But I'm sure the little fellow will grow into it. He's grown into everything else we've given him and right out of it again. You might say he's thriving. He seems to like it, here on Middle-earth." 

Ezzie draped a nappie over her shoulder and down her front, slipped the wee one beneath it and placed him to her breast. Frodo could see nothing but soft honey-coloured wisps of curl. 

At last his cousin fell back satiated, infant eyes lolling half-shut. Ezzie dabbed his face with the cloth. "There," she said, composing herself. "We'll call that luncheon. He had elevenses an hour ago. And before that his fourth breakfast since daybreak, assuming I haven't lost count. No wonder he's growing so fast." 

Meriadoc wriggled languidly and fussed against oncoming sleep. "Would you like to hold him, Frodo?" 

Ezzie didn't wait for a reply. She placed the baby in his arms, gently positioning Frodo's wrists and elbows to form a cradle. It took him a few moments to get used to holding the precious thing, but he quickly caught on. 

_"Drogo holds him for hours on end, just gazing on him in stunned adoration. We are besotted with him." _The sudden memory of Mum's words brought stinging tears to his eyes. What a gift it was to be held so, and loved so! If he did nothing else to honour the memory of Mum and Dad, he must at least do this: he must pass that gift along. He loosened one hand, gently stroking his cousin's little brow. "You're so content, Meriadoc," he said. "So happy. We should call you _Merry." _

At that, little Merry smiled and gave a cooing laugh, and his tiny hand closed around Frodo's finger, hard. Then he sighed and snuffled, settled comfortably into Frodo's arms, and fell asleep. But like a bird, he did not loosen his grip. 

"Why's he doing that?" Frodo said, laughing with delight. 

Ezzie settled beside Frodo and put her arm about his shoulder. "Well, having learned a great many of my son's ways in the past week, I'd say that he knows he needs to sleep, but he wishes to keep on protecting you." 

"He's protecting me? But I'm so much bigger than he is!" 

"I don't believe size matters to Meriadoc. Or, rather, to _Merry_—it's a good name, Frodo. I like it." 

~~~~~ 

"Well, Frodo, it's done, lad," Rory said. Frodo was up now and well enough to be called before Rory in the parlour that served as his uncle's office. Aunt Mennie and Saradoc were there, and Ezzie with little Merry in her arms. They all looked dazed, wide-eyed and pale, as though they had just gotten very bad news about the prospects for harvest. "It's settled," Rory said again. "Paid up. The farmer went away satisfied. But—Mr. Maggot says he wishes never, _never _to see your face on his property again, to the uttermost ending of the world." 

"Yes, Uncle." 

"Now, then. Maggot may be satisfied, but I'm not." 

"No, Uncle." 

"Come here, boy." Frodo obeyed, bracing himself for another beating. Instead, to his surprise, Rory came around the table and laid a callused hand on his brow in what was almost a gesture of blessing. "I am at my wits' end with you, lad. I don't know what to do with this Tookish thing in you, not to mention the confounded _Baggins..." _

"Oh, let up on him, Dad," Saradoc said. "It's none of those things. Don't you see? He's still in mourning for his folks." 

"Well, who isn't? Who among us doesn't wish Primmie and Drogo had never set out in that accursed boat? I took my heaviest wood-axe to it, did you know that? And after I hacked the bloody thing to splinters I burnt it to ashes and stomped it into the ground." 

Rory ran his hand over his face. "But time doesn't stand still," he said. "Neither does the work that's to be done. Life is for the living. The dead get to rest. The ones left behind can't afford to stand about moping year after year." 

"Well, Dad, not everybody handles it the same," Saradoc argued. 

"No," Rory said. "The rest of us aren't carrying on like an invasion of goblins. Maggot was my ally. In not paying attention to the needs of this boy I have allowed a Baggins to come between me and my oldest neighbour and friend." 

A look passed between Saradoc and Esmeralda. 

"You know, Dad," Saradoc ventured, "since the name _Baggins _has come up, I think I should mention that Uncle Bilbo has asked after Frodo." 

"More than once," Ezzie added. 

"He can ask all he likes," Rory said. "The boy's a Brandybuck. He stays here." 

"Bilbo," Mennie said. "My, my. And how is that queer old duck? Silly fellow, making all that up. But in the end I suppose he's harmless." 

"The only way of knowing what's harmless in the end is for the end to come, and then we'll see what's harmed and what isn't," Rory grumped. "And don't be forgetting that it's my job to keep the end from coming for as long as I possibly can." 

"Well, nobody does it better, Dad," Saradoc said. "From the Bridge to the Downs you're considered among the wisest of hobbits. A real leader of our people." 

"That's right," Ezzie said. "I've often heard Uncle Bilbo say so." 

"Well, there, you see," Mennie said, beaming with pride. 

But Rory was not to be flattered. "Now, listen to me. As if my neighbours near to rioting weren't enough, I've got calves with pink-eye and weevils in my malt. I've got no time for dwarves and dragons! Why do you think I kept the boy here? Did you think I'd turn him over to those outlandish Hobbiton folk? And to Bilbo Baggins in particular? Though the deuce knows they've been trying long and hard enough to get their hands on the lad...." 

"They have?" Frodo cried. Somebody wanted him, and he didn't even know. 

"They have. Don't look at me like that, boy. I did what I thought was best." 

"Best for you, Rory, not for him," Ezzie said sharply. 

"Esmeralda, what's best for him is if that bloody boat had never gone under," Rory snorted, and returned to the pile of papers on his desk. He would say no more that day. 

But Saradoc had plenty to say, and in the end got his way: a Shire Post rider set out for Bag End the following morning. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

NOTE on Chapter 5 

_"...as though he were nothing more than a naughty fauntling..." _—A _faunt _is a hobbit who has attained toddler age and is walking and talking, formally by his or her third birthday. It's a charming word and one the author has always wanted to use in a sentence. From Letter #214 to reader A.C. Nunn, dating from late 1958 or early 1959.


	6. West Wind

Chapter Six: West Wind 

_...as kind as summer. _—The Hobbit

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

For the next three days Frodo hardly slept. He kept to himself, not setting foot outside his former sickroom near the front parlour. On the fourth morning, about nine o'clock, the dreaded summons came at last. He put on the dress-up clothes they'd left him, hand-me-downs so big the sleeves hung past his hands, and with his chest hurting and his head down he slunk into Rory's sitting-room. 

Bilbo had not yet arrived. Rory and Aunt Mennie looked extremely uncomfortable in their official wedding-and-important-visitor clothes, their stiff starched collars and cuffs contrasting mightily with their callused, work-worn hands. They nodded when Frodo came in but they didn't say anything, and he wondered if they weren't every bit as apprehensive as he was. 

He sank onto the hearth and sat there cross-legged, his elbows resting on his knees, his face in his hands. He had no idea what to expect. He hardly knew Bilbo at all, except by reputation. Rory preferred it that way. Like most hobbits, Rory preferred things set out fair and square, with no contradictions. And Bilbo embodied contradiction: he was rich, and a Baggins—the most respectable name in Middle-earth, according to Dad (who winked when he said it). As such Bilbo was envied and revered. But he was also despised and feared: the subject of endless lurid conjectures and vicious rumours. 

The door opened and Bilbo breezed in, still adjusting a glinting collar stud that did not seem to want to remain closed. He was so dapper, so fit, and so extremely young-looking that by contrast Rory and Mennie suddenly appeared as wrinkled as storeroom apples. His brown hair was only lightly flecked with grey, his face was ageless and smooth—except for tiny creases of laughter at the corners of his eyes, which were the jolliest brown-green. 

The grown-ups exchanged polite greetings and took their seats. Frodo wondered what the great Bilbo would make of this wretched young nobody Baggins who was in trouble too big for him. For he _was _great, Mum had said so, and it had made no difference to her that Rory thought he was mad. 

"Hullo, Frodo," he said pleasantly. Then, as a splendid second breakfast was brought in, he set right to it. 

There were scones with jam, buttered toast, cold ham, pickled eggs, applesauce, and, to fill in the corners, fresh buckberry tarts with cream. Frodo wasn't hungry. He sat very still, trying not to attract attention. Mennie shoved a heaped tray in his lap and fixed him with an intense look that quite clearly conveyed, _We-are-taking-excellent-care-of-you-and-just-to-prove-it-you-had-better-finish-every-bite. _Trying to be obedient, he picked miserably at his breakfast. 

There was a deal of quiet if somewhat strained conversation until the dishes were removed and the pipes lit, at which point Rory launched into a litany of woes concerning Primula's boy. Bilbo nodded, and from time to time he would glance at Frodo. He said very little except to ask occasional questions, some of which concerned Frodo and some of which did not. 

From Bilbo's questions Frodo learned a great deal about his elder cousin: was baby Merry sleeping through the night yet? Had the Puddifoots and Mennie's people, the Goolds, succeeded in draining that stubborn low spot down near Willowbottom? Did Saradoc think the troubles near the Bounds had anything to do with the greatly increased westward traffic of Elves and Dwarves along the East Road? Bilbo knew all about the weather patterns over Buckland and the Marish, and he was up-to-the-moment on the agricultural prospects. He knew about the trouble with the Eastfarthing folk and about the incursions of strangers from the South. He knew as well all about the excesses of hobbit youth. He knew what was acceptable (and expected), and what was not. 

At last Rory wore himself out. Then, as Frodo had dreaded, Bilbo looked across the parlour to him. "Well, lad, you've not said a word." 

Frodo didn't reply. 

"Come and talk to me. Here, take a chair." 

Slowly he made his way to the empty place between Bilbo and Rory. In spite of Frodo's best efforts Bilbo caught his eye, and Frodo had to return that keen glance, because it was unthinkable for a younger hobbit not to respect an elder in such a way. 

"So," Bilbo said. "This is a serious business, what your uncle's telling me. What have you got to say for yourself?" 

"Nothing, sir." 

"Nothing at all?" 

"No, sir." 

There was a long silence. Frodo resumed staring at the floor, wishing he could stare a hole right through it and throw himself in. He thought Rory might start in again, but he didn't. This time it was Aunt Mennie, wringing her hands. 

"At first he never hurt anyone but himself," she said theatrically. "But that was only the beginning. Rory and I wondered how much of it was just teenaged mischief and how much was something worse. We raised two boys, you know. We think that by now we know boyish high spirits from darker, more dangerous moods, and to tell the truth we can't see all that much difference in the lad." 

"Certainly cause for concern, I'd say," Bilbo remarked. 

"Yes. Yes." Mennie took out a handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes. "So sad. Sulking, paying no mind to his appearance, ignoring the cousins he's played with all his life, defying his uncle who's given him food and shelter, setting out on the River so carelessly it's almost as though he wanted to fall in himself. I don't believe he cares about anything any more." She sighed deeply. "Bilbo, I would never have thought that anything, not even such a terrible tragedy, could keep this boy's natural joy under a barrel for so long. I did all I could to help him come out of it. I just don't know what's gotten into him." 

"I believe I do," Bilbo said thoughtfully. 

"Well, if you know what it is, I wish you'd tell us." 

Bilbo looked at Frodo, and his eyes were kind and sad. "The Dúnedain call it _melancholy," _he said. "The Elves probably have a hundred names for it. They have after all been known to spend centuries at a time in that very state." 

"Oi, I knew it wouldn't be long before he was off on Elves!" Rory said, rolling his eyes. 

"But among our people it's rare," Bilbo went on, sidestepping Rory's remark. "In point of fact, I have never seen another hobbit come down with such a fine case of it—besides myself." 

"And what is the cause of this melancholy?" Mennie said. 

"You really don't know?" 

Mennie shook her head sadly. Rory sat unmoving. 

"It comes of looking past the edges of the map into the blank spaces beyond." 

"I don't follow you," Mennie said. 

"And I don't know what in the Shire you're talking about," Rory declared. 

"Don't you? The boy lost his parents. He misses them desperately. He wonders on some level where they might be, and whether he will ever be with them again." 

Rory sat back and lit another pipe, relaxing a bit. "Well, you both saw us putting them in the ground over by Newbury. If you ask me, that's where they are." 

"Where they are, yes. But not _where they are, _if you understand me. And that's what concerns the boy." 

"So it does," Rory said. "And so it does anyone who loses a loved one, and all do, later or sooner. But then there's work to be done and no more time for dwelling on what can't be changed anyhow." 

"That's right," Mennie said. "You have to get on with it, Frodo dear. You can't pine your life away. It isn't how hobbits do things." 

Frodo put his face in his hands, trying to swallow the painful lump in his throat. Why _couldn't _he get on with it, anyway? He felt very bad and wrong. 

"Has he had a good cry about it?" Bilbo said mildly. 

"No, thankfully, there's been none of that," Mennie said. 

"But, Mennie, there is nothing wrong with tears. They are painful to have and unpleasant to watch, of course. And for those like you who are called upon the tend the grieving when you've got a thousand other things to do, they're a confounded nuisance. But in a world marred by evil and the fear of death, tears are a gift." 

Rory bristled. "Well, now, if you think we've not treated the boy in the right way—" 

"My dear cousin, I think nothing of the sort. You are in fact one of the most generous hobbits I know. As Mennie reminded us, you have sheltered your nephew, clothed him, kept a hungry teenager fed—no small feat, that." 

"No, indeed," Rory said. "_Thank _you." 

"And I've taken him to visit their graves, twice since it happened," Mennie said. 

"I was sure you had." 

"So what are you getting at, then?" Rory said. 

"I presume you called me here because you wished for my views on the matter." 

"It was Saradoc's idea, not mine," Rory sniffed. 

"I see." 

There was a long uncomfortable silence. 

At last, pushing back his chair in his best _you-are-dismissed _manner, Rory rose, saying, "Perhaps there's nothing more to discuss, then." 

"Well, perhaps not," Bilbo said. 

Frodo felt his heart sinking. 

"But half a moment!" Bilbo had shown no sign of leaving. "I say, Mennie, you've given me a splendid idea. It's time for another visit, isn't it? The thirteenth August is day after tomorrow. This time let me take the boy up to Newbury. It's been far too long since I paid my respects to Primmie and Drogo. And he'll be out of your hair for a day or two. Give things a chance to cool down a bit. Yes?" 

Uncle Rory and Aunt Mennie said nothing, but they managed to look at once abashed, annoyed, baffled, and intensely relieved. 

"Very well, then. Frodo, get your things together, lad. We'll leave after elevenses." 

~~~~~ 

They were off by three, not bad work for a pair of hobbits. Frodo felt calm. He feared nothing. He hoped for nothing. There was no letup in the huge lump of pain in his chest, nor any breach in the layers of cotton-wool that blanketed it, but this at least was something different. 

Bilbo proved to be good company, silent and talkative by turns, just when Frodo needed him to be. Their ponies, laden with grave-offerings, kept a sedate pace through the green-tunneled lanes of Bucklebury and the scattered farmsteads beyond. The countryside became open and rolling, a rich green cross-hatched with hedgerows of deeper green, dotted with copses and grey stone outcroppings. The sky was fair above them, the birds wheeling and crying, the clouds flat and grey beneath, gleaming white-gold above. They cast vast moving patches of shadow as the wind sent them scudding eastward into lands unknown, blank lands beyond the Shire's safe bounds. To the east the High Hay loomed, an ever-nearer wall of darkness. 

They went slowly, stopping often. That night they camped near a chattering brook that ran westward toward Brandywine. The morning was sunny but chill, with a heavy dew-fall, and it wasn't until noon that they passed through the quiet village of Newbury, where the grave-tenders dwelt. Here the Hay filled half the sky. It was a rampart against the wild forest and at the same time the Brandybuck clan's greatest (and perhaps only) work of art: an immense wall of trees and shrubs, tangled and chaotic yet orderly, with mingled tiers of different hues and textures ranging from the pale flat glittering leaves of poplar, to feathered yew of a green so dark it was almost black, to the gleaming leathery straps of fire-thorn. Wherever the Sun lingered, on Her daily voyage across the sky, wild roses covered the Hay in a pink froth; and there were blackberry brambles tangled about its feet, a final defense against the hostile trees and strange creatures of the Old Forest. 

Here, for some miles, a river of grass ran alongside the Hay, at its widest as wide as Brandywine. It had been planted long in the past and had grown along with Buckland, serving as the cemetery for all Bucklanders, Masters of the Hall and ordinary folk alike. Its length rippled with low mounds, not like the huge sky-blotting things of the Barrow-downs of evil repute, but gentle undulations like ripples in the green river. 

They entered the cemetery at a point two miles due north of the village, where the Hay curved sharply westward, and where two sombre stone gateposts indicated a gravel path into the expanse of curving turves. The path ended after a short distance. They made their way around the carven grave markers sprinkling the grass until they came to the place, right up against the dark tangled feet of the Hay, where a single flat square of chiseled marble lay over Mum and Dad: 

_"Drogo Baggins of Hobbiton, late of Brandy Hall.  
Taken by Brandywine, 13th August 1380. _

Primula Brandybuck-Baggins.  
Beloved youngest daughter of Master Broadbelt and Mirabella Took.   
Taken by Brandywine, 13th August 1380." 

They dismounted on the path, and Frodo ran ahead. He fell to his knees beside the stone, flinging his arms over his head as though that could protect him from the unutterable sorrow and incomprehension welling up inside. Most of the time he felt dull and dead, but here the loss pierced him like knives. 

"Oh, lad," said Bilbo, hurrying to his side. "You shouldn't have to face this place alone. I'm sorry; I was fooling about, getting the ponies squared away, and I let you get ahead of me. Here, now. Here, now." Frodo's hands were clutched so tightly he was pulling his own hair. Gently Bilbo pried them loose. "Now, then, lad, you'll only hurt yourself, doing that. Anyway, you can't protect yourself that way. All the darkness and horror is inside you, you know. Which is just as Melkor intended," he added softly. 

"Who?" 

"Take a deep breath, lad," Bilbo said. "All in good time." He held Frodo's hands firmly. Frodo took a great gulping chestful of air, which broke the spell. When his ragged breathing became even again Bilbo loosed his hands. 

"I think you need a spot of tea." Cheerfully Bilbo busied himself building a small campfire of twigs and bits of broken brush. He produced a chubby copper tea-kettle and went to find a stream to fill it. Soon it was singing merrily. 

But Frodo, seated on a corner of the flat stone, felt it, and himself, going cold. When Bilbo roused him and placed a steaming mug in his hand, Frodo felt as though he were being called back from a distant dark land. 

"Don't go to those places," Bilbo said. "No need to think about anything right now but the tea. Here, I crushed some lovely mint in it. Brought it with me from my garden back home at Bag End. My gardener makes things grow better there than anywhere else on Middle-earth. Just breathe it in as it cools. You'll find it clears the cloud-wrack from your mind." 

"How did you know?" Frodo said. 

"How did I know what?" 

"About the cloud-wrack." 

"Only a guess," Bilbo said, smiling sadly. He brought his own tea and settled right there on the stone beside Frodo and fell silent, just as Frodo needed him to be. 

At this place the Hay, behind them, was dominated by an impenetrable barrier of yew, its feathery boughs seeming to whisper with the voices of the dead. It was a gentle, comforting sound, and it soothed Frodo liked the tea and the fumes of sweet mint. He felt close to Mum and Dad again, closer than he had felt since Mum's words went up in flames. _I miss you so. I love you so. _He hoped that Bilbo would let him linger there, if only for a little while. Aunt Mennie never would. "Won't help," she'd say. At the first sign of weeping she'd cuff his ear and drag him off. "Won't bring 'em back," she'd say. 

But Bilbo had been different from the moment they set forth from the Hall. "Better now?" he said. 

Frodo nodded. 

"Very well, then. First things first, eh, lad?" They unloaded the ponies: Mennie's intricately-worked straw garlands, and bunches of sun-flowers and end-of-summer roses tied with ribbons, with sprigs of heather and dried lavender especially for Mum. For Dad Bilbo drew forth several flat oval leaves half as tall as Frodo, still wick at the centre but withering around the edges, as they dried giving off that heady odour that reminded Frodo so sharply of summertime, and laughter.... 

"It's Southlinch," Bilbo said. "Your dad could discourse for hours upon the subtle distinctions between Old Toby, Southern Star, and the rest, but leaf from Bree was his favourite, the one luxury he allowed himself. He always said he needed nothing more in life than Primmie and Frodo—he was so fond of you, lad, and so proud—and after that, good food, good red wine, good leaf." 

After they had reverently decorated the mound over Mum and Dad, Bilbo spread a blanket near the gravestone. He sat down cross-legged and took out a long slender pipe, not of clay but of some milky white stone, with carving so intricate it had to be Elvish. He soon was wreathed in a sweet pungent smoke that made Frodo miss Dad so dreadfully he stifled a cry of anguish and turned away. 

Bilbo gestured for Frodo to come and settle beside him. "When the time comes I'll show you how it's done, Frodo-lad. You tamp the weed just so, you draw just so, not too slowly or the fire will go out, not too quickly or you'll swallow smoke and cough till you think your tom-fool head's coming off. I know, I made every mistake there was." His eyes crinkled at the memory. "I told my dad I'd never be doing _that _again, meaning smoking. 'Oh yes you will, boy,' he said, and next thing I knew that pipe was right back between my teeth, and it was draw and do it properly or choke to death. You may be sure I did! And now it gives me deep, deep joy. I couldn't go a day without it. You'll find out, one of these days when you're a bit older. I was twenty-five or so when my dad taught me. That seems about right, don't you think?" 

Smoking was only one of the rites of passage that Frodo had come to realize he'd no dad to help him through. At Bilbo's words his eyes got blurry, and a single tear rolled down his face. 

Bilbo didn't seem to notice. He was silent again, gazing in the fire thoughtfully. Frodo hugged his knees and put his head down. He was so near Mum and Dad here! And this time no one was dragging him away because it wouldn't help, wouldn't bring them back. In her gruff way Aunt Mennie was kind to him, and he loved her. But she was wrong. It did help. It didn't bring them back, but oh, it helped. 

After a time Frodo found he needed Bilbo to talk again. He didn't even have to ask. "Your parents were very dear to me," Bilbo began. "They met at midsummer, you know, seemingly for the first time, although...." 

"...they'd known each other all their lives," Frodo said, remembering Mum's precious account of how she came to marry Dad. 

"Yes, you know the story, of course. Primmie was such a smart girl, a thinker and a questioner. And she was a Took all the way, like her mother, even though her father was a Brandybuck. Good folk, the Brandybucks, if a bit rustic and odd. Kind and generous as the day is long. But not much for the books. Much more for the hunting and fishing—and the farming. Primmie was their baby, a dark-haired blue-eyed lass as fair as an Elf-maiden, beloved by all and cherished especially by her dad, old Gorbadoc." 

Bilbo remembered Mum as a bright and beautiful hobbit-girl. He remembered Dad as a young rascal with cheeks like apples and a reputation for leaving no pie cupboard unpilfered. Frodo felt his heart spilling over with questions, and Bilbo had no end of answers and tales and digressions, during all of which he somehow managed put a tea before them, followed by a dinner and a splendid cold supper. Beyond their fire the world grew utterly dark and filled with the sounds of night, and they talked on. Frodo had gradually drawn close to the older hobbit and was soon leaning on Bilbo's shoulder, as content as little Merry in Ezzie's arms. Bilbo slipped an arm about him and drew him closer. 

"I remember the night you were born, Frodo," he said. "It had been a fine September, the sky almost as blue as Primmie's eyes, and then the weather broke, with rain coming in over the Marish in a silver-grey curtain. It rained so hard that every road and lane was a river of mud, and the rain-barrels filled up faster than the stable-hobbits could empty them. You missed the first day of autumn and came two minutes after midnight on September the twenty-second, just as I'd been hoping, because then we'd share a birthday. 

"Primmie came through it marvellously. She never even cried out. Mennie and Asphodel said it was as though she were birthing her dozenth hobbit, not her very first. They cleaned you up and brought you out to your dad, and pop! those buttons of Drogo's went flying everywhere. Even then you had a mop of wild dark curls, and downy dark hair on your little feet, and we all of us proclaimed loud and long we'd never seen anything so handsome, because we hadn't. I was next to hold you, and it didn't hurt so much that I wouldn't have one of my own, now that you were here. 

"Then the women came back and told us it was time for you to nurse. They let Drogo in, and me as well, because Primmie and I had always been close. Primmie put you to her breast like she'd been doing it all her life, and you—what can I say? You had the lustiest appetite of any hobbit baby I've seen before or since!" 

Frodo laughed. It came out sounding like a sob. 

"Primmie stroked your dear little curls while you nursed, and looked at you with so much love it broke my heart, and finally she said, 'He is a lord and a prince, and he will be the fairest hobbit the Shire has ever seen, the greatest, kindest, most generous.' They say that every mum feels that way, but Primmie _knew _it. And she was right, of course." 

Frodo looked up sharply. How could Bilbo say that, when Frodo had just made such a mess of things? "Uncle Rory wouldn't agree," he said sadly. 

"Of course he would," Bilbo scoffed. "You're the apple of his eye, or at least you were until little Merry came along. You know how it is, those long-awaited grandbabies," he said with a wink. "And in any event, Rory may be perplexed by what you're _doing_—after all, up until now you've never given him the tiniest helping of applesauce—but that makes no difference as to what you _are, _which is his beloved baby sister's only son. Do you understand me, Frodo?" he said, suddenly serious. 

"No, sir. Not completely." 

"Well, then, we'll do some more work on it over the next few days. Would you like to sleep here tonight, lad?" 

"Here? Could we?" 

"Of course. There's naught to harm us. We're hobbits. We're blessed with quiet dead. It's Men, who throughout the long ages of the world have courted evil and chosen dark paths, who have cause to fear their graveyards." 

"I never heard that before," Frodo said, wide-eyed. 

"Haven't you? Well, don't let it dismay you. No shades of Men are coming _here. _You sleep now. I'll unpack what we need. And tomorrow I'll tell you more about the Wide World, if you've a desire to hear it." 

Before Bilbo returned with the bedrolls Frodo was asleep, his arm curled over his parents' stone. Bilbo gently lifted his head and slipped a pillow beneath it, then spread a blanket over the lad. He paused a moment to smooth Frodo's tangled dark hair and to caress his brow. Then he lit another pipe and sat up far into the night, remembering the good bright days when he and the world were younger, and Drogo and Primula, his favourite cousins, were where they belonged, alive and laughing upon Middle-earth. So much had changed since then, so very much. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

NOTES on Chapter Six 

_"The Dúnedain call it _melancholy...." —Melancholy, meaning "condition of black bile," is a word with Greek roots that I was not altogether happy using in such an Anglo-Saxon-driven story world, but it does derive from the medieval theory of body fluids or "humors" as the source of temperament. Not being expert at rendering English into Sindarin, I decided not to attempt to coin a more accurate-sounding word. 

_"An immense wall of trees and shrubs, tangled and chaotic yet orderly, with mingled tiers of different hues and textures...." _—Thanks to _Elwen _for her splendid suggestions, in response to a query posted by the author in the Geek Thread at Council-of-Elrond.com, as to what plantings might have constituted the High Hay. 

_"Beneath the Hay for some miles ran a river of grass...that served as the cemetery for all Bucklanders....Its length rippled with low mounds...." _—I had to enlarge considerably upon the meager hints Tolkien gives us about burial customs, particularly among hobbits. For this Karen Rockow's monograph Funeral Customs in Tolkien's Trilogy, my copy published in 1973, was immensely helpful. According to her study, inhumation was preferred by most of the free races of Middle-earth over other funeral practices. Humans, particularly the northern branch of which hobbits were a part, built mounds over their graves. It was strictly my own invention to place the burial ground for all of Buckland in one place. I was thinking of the city of Colma near San Francisco, which basically serves as a cemetery for the entire Bay Area. It is a lovely green place, very serene and not somber at all.


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